Frontal brain asymmetries as effective parameters to assess the quality of audiovisual stimuli perception in adult and young cochlear implant users

How is music perceived by cochlear implant (CI) users? This question arises as "the next step" given the impressive performance obtained by these patients in language perception. Furthermore, how can music perception be evaluated beyond self-report rating, in order to obtain measurable data? To address this question, estimation of the frontal electroencephalographic (EEG) alpha activity imbalance, acquired through a 19-channel EEG cap, appears to be a suitable instrument to measure the approach/withdrawal (AW index) reaction to external stimuli. Specifically, a greater value of AW indicates an increased propensity to stimulus approach, and vice versa a lower one a tendency to withdraw from the stimulus. Additionally, due to prelingually and postlingually deafened pathology acquisition, children and adults, respectively, would probably differ in music perception. The aim of the present study was to investigate children and adult CI users, in unilateral (UCI) and bilateral (BCI) implantation conditions, during three experimental situations of music exposure (normal, distorted and mute). Additionally, a study of functional connectivity patterns within cerebral networks was performed to investigate functioning patterns in different experimental populations. As a general result, congruency among patterns between BCI patients and control (CTRL) subjects was seen, characterised by lowest values for the distorted condition (vs. normal and mute conditions) in the AW index and in the connectivity analysis. Additionally, the normal and distorted conditions were significantly different in CI and CTRL adults, and in CTRL children, but not in CI children. These results suggest a higher capacity of discrimination and approach motivation towards normal music in CTRL and BCI subjects, but not for UCI patients. Therefore, for perception of music CTRL and BCI participants appear more similar than UCI subjects, as estimated by measurable and not self-reported parameters

The effect of exposure to low frequency electromagnetic fields (EMF) as an integral part of the housing system on anxiety-related behaviour, cognition and welfare in two strains of laboratory mouse.

Electromagnetic field (EMF) technology has the potential to improve scientific data capture and welfare assessment by allowing automated data collection from individual cages. How- ever, it is important to determine any impact that a new technology itself may have on animal welfare, and previous studies have found contrasting results of EMF on laboratory rodent anxiety-like behaviour and cognition. We therefore investigated whether there was an effect of low frequency EMF experienced continuously over a six-week period, as an integral part of the animal housing system, on measures of mouse anxiety-related behaviour, cognition and welfare. We housed mice (N = 80) of two strains (BALB/cAnNCrl and C57BL/6NCrl) separately in Individually Ventilated Cages (IVCs) in groups of four, either with the EMF plate turned ‘on’ or ‘off’ (n = 5). Some measures, e.g. food and water utilisation, were col- lected at regular intervals, whereas measures of anxiety-like behaviour (e.g. open field test) and cognitive performance (novel-object recognition test) were collected only at the end of the study. We found expected strong strain differences in most measures, e.g. latency to leave the starting square in an open field test, with C57BL/6NCrl mice moving away sooner, and interactions between strain and time for those measures recorded at more than one time point, e.g. significant weight gain over time for both strains, but with BALB/cAnNCrl mice weighing more. However, we found no significant effects of treatment (EMF ‘on’/‘off’) for any of the measures collected. These results indicate that, for the measures recorded here, there was no measurable impact on the behaviour and welfare of low frequency EMF exposure experienced continuously over a six-week period. Housing systems that include EMF monitoring technology may therefore be suitable for use without influencing either ani- mal welfare or scientific outcomes

Environmental tobacco smoke: health policy and focus on Italian legislation.

Worldwide tobacco smoking kills nearly 6 million people each year, including more than 600,000 non-smokers who die from smoke exposure. Environmental tobacco smoke (ETS, also called secondhand smoke, involuntary smoke, or passive smoke) is the combination of sidestream smoke, the smoke given off by a burning tobacco product and mainstream smoke, the smoke exhaled by smokers. People may be exposed to ETS in homes, cars, workplaces, and public places, such as bars, restaurants, and recreational settings. In addition, there is another type of smoke which until now has not been recognized: the so-called thirdhand smoke, that comes from the reaction of mainstream smoke and environmental nitrous acid (HNO2) making carcinogenic tobacco-specific nitrosamines (TSNAs). The effects of ETS on human health are well-known, passive smoking is harmful to those who breathe the toxins and it is a serious problem for public health. The smoking ban in Italy had reduced ETS pollution, as in the United States and in other countries all over the world. However, the implementation of comprehensive legislation on smoking policy will necessitate other tobacco control measures for its successful fulfillment: increased media awareness, telephone smoking cessation helplines and smoking cessation support services could be an opportunity to ensure awareness, comprehension and support to those who want to quit smoking. The effectiveness of legislative efforts will also depend on successful enforcement of smoking bans and compliance with the legislation. This review summarizes the evidences about the effect of ETS and provides an overview of smoke-free laws and policies

Tap For Battle: Perancangan Casual Game pada Smartphone Android

Smartphones have become a necessity. Almost everyone uses a smartphone in a variety of activities. Both young and old are sure to utilize this technology, for a wide range of activities such as doing the work, doing school work or enjoying entertainment. The purpose of this research is to build a casual-action game with war theme. The game is built for Android smartphone that has multi touch screen capability. The research methods used in this research are data collection and analysis method including user analysis with questionnaire. Furthermore, IMSDD method is implemented for game design and development phase including system requirement analysis, system design, system implementation, finally system evaluation. In this research, we conclude that 83.9% participants enjoyed the game with touch-screen as the game control

Generating socially appropriate tutorial dialog

Analysis of student-tutor coaching dialogs suggest that good human tutors attend to and attempt to influence the motivational state of learners. Moreover, they are sensitive to the social face of the learner, and seek to mitigate the potential face threat of their comments. This paper describes a dialog generator for pedagogical agents that takes motivation and face threat factors into account. This enables the agent to interact with learners in a socially appropriate fashion, and foster intrinsic motivation on the part of the learner, which in turn may lead to more positive learner affective states

Prospect for Charge Current Neutrino Interactions Measurements at the CERN-PS

Tensions in several phenomenological models grew with experimental results on neutrino/antineutrino oscillations at Short-Baseline (SBL) and with the recent, carefully recomputed, antineutrino fluxes from nuclear reactors. At a refurbished SBL CERN-PS facility an experiment aimed to address the open issues has been proposed [1], based on the technology of imaging in ultra-pure cryogenic Liquid Argon (LAr). Motivated by this scenario a detailed study of the physics case was performed. We tackled specific physics models and we optimized the neutrino beam through a full simulation. Experimental aspects not fully covered by the LAr detection, i.e. the measurements of the lepton charge on event-by-event basis and their energy over a wide range, were also investigated. Indeed the muon leptons from Charged Current (CC) (anti-)neutrino interactions play an important role in disentangling different phenomenological scenarios provided their charge state is determined. Also, the study of muon appearance/disappearance can benefit of the large statistics of CC muon events from the primary neutrino beam. Results of our study are reported in detail in this proposal. We aim to design, construct and install two Spectrometers at "NEAR" and "FAR" sites of the SBL CERN-PS, compatible with the already proposed LAr detectors. Profiting of the large mass of the two Spectrometers their stand-alone performances have also been exploited.Comment: 70 pages, 38 figures. Proposal submitted to SPS-C, CER

Search for anomalies in the neutrino sector with muon spectrometers and large LArTPC imaging detectors at CERN

A new experiment with an intense ~2 GeV neutrino beam at CERN SPS is proposed in order to definitely clarify the possible existence of additional neutrino states, as pointed out by neutrino calibration source experiments, reactor and accelerator experiments and measure the corresponding oscillation parameters. The experiment is based on two identical LAr-TPCs complemented by magnetized spectrometers detecting electron and muon neutrino events at Far and Near positions, 1600 m and 300 m from the proton target, respectively. The ICARUS T600 detector, the largest LAr-TPC ever built with a size of about 600 ton of imaging mass, now running in the LNGS underground laboratory, will be moved at the CERN Far position. An additional 1/4 of the T600 detector (T150) will be constructed and located in the Near position. Two large area spectrometers will be placed downstream of the two LAr-TPC detectors to perform charge identification and muon momentum measurements from sub-GeV to several GeV energy range, greatly complementing the physics capabilities. This experiment will offer remarkable discovery potentialities, collecting a very large number of unbiased events both in the neutrino and antineutrino channels, largely adequate to definitely settle the origin of the observed neutrino-related anomalies.Comment: Contribution to the European Strategy for Particle Physics - Open Symposium Preparatory Group, Kracow 10-12 September 201