Commentary on "Why Does Music Therapy Help in Autism?" by N. Khetrapal

Khetrapal reviews the literature on music and autism and stresses the need for a greater focus on the cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying both autism and music perception. I build upon this review and discuss the strong connections between speech prosody and emotion in music. These connections imply that emotion recognition training in one domain can influence emotion recognition in the other. Understanding of emotional speech is frequently impaired in individuals with ASD, so music therapy should be explored further as a possible treatment

Influence of different polishing materials in the material removal of steel samples

The quality of injection moulded polymer optic parts depends on the surface finish of the respective mould. In order to improve and control the surface finish of the mould it is important to be able to keep the material removal constant during the polishing process of these moulds. This will provide a tactical material removal therefore allowing a controlled correction of the mould’s surface geometry. The aim of this work is to study the influence of different polishing materials in the material removal rate and its reproducibility during the polishing process of hardened steel. Different polyurethane polishing materials with different fillers were tested. It was observed that the filler material of the polyurethane is crucial in order to obtain constant and reproducible results. Experiments were carried out with an industrial robot and the material removal’s depth value was compared

Tool for the Analysis of Human Interaction with Two-Dimensional Printed Imagery

The study of human vision can include our interaction with objects. These studies include behavior modeling, understanding visual attention and motor guidance, and enhancing user experiences. But all these studies have one thing in common. To analyze the data in detail, researchers typically have to analyze video data frame by frame. Real world interaction data often comprises of data from both eye and hand. Analyzing such data frame by frame can get very tedious and time-consuming. A calibrated scene video from an eye-tracker captured at 120 Hz for 3 minutes has over 21,000 frames to be analyzed. Automating the process is crucial to allow interaction research to proceed. Research in object recognition over the last decade now allows eye-movement data to be analyzed automatically to determine what a subject is looking at and for how long. I will describe my research in which I developed a pipeline to help researchers analyze interaction data including eye and hand. Inspired by a semi-automated pipeline for analyzing eye tracking data, I have created a pipeline for analyzing hand grasp along with gaze. Putting both pipelines together can help researchers analyze interaction data. The hand-grasp pipeline detects skin to locate the hands, then determines what object (if any) the hand is over, and where the thumbs/fingers occluded that object. I also compare identification with recognition throughout the pipeline. The current pipeline operates on independent frames; future work will extend the pipeline to take advantage of the dynamics of natural interactions

Alignment model for trunk road network maintenance outsourcing

Road maintenance outsourcing is now the foremost strategy by which road authorities procure maintenance works. Despite growing application of road maintenance outsourcing, there are conflicting estimates on the effective­ness of road maintenance outsourcing and shortage of appropriate models to align over optimistic expectations of road authorities from road maintenance outsourcing with substantiated benefits. This paper investigates the efficacy of road maintenance outsourcing. In this paper, the different variants of road maintenance outsourcing and road maintenance works are evaluated with a SWOT analysis and a comprehensive literature review respectively. In addition, a road main­tenance outsourcing alignment model based on a decision tree and Balance Score Card is proposed and illustrated with a Nigerian trunk road network authority as a case study. The result of the SWOT analysis and comprehensive literature review establishes fresh insight into road maintenance outsourcing dynamics. The presented road maintenance outsourc­ing alignment model provides adequate pathways that could assist road authorities identify the most appropriate road maintenance outsourcing variant for road maintenance procurement. In addition it aligns actual benefits and expectations of road maintenance outsourcing and facilitates development of SMART metrics for effective assessment of road main­tenance outsourcing. The proposed model is applicable across other infrastructures. First published online: 01 Sep 201

Momentum space properties from coordinate space electron density

Electron density and electron momentum density, while independently tractable experimentally, bear no direct connection without going through the many-electron wave function. However, invoking a variant of the constrained-search formulation of density functional theory, we develop a general scheme (valid for arbitrary external potentials) yielding decent momentum space properties, starting exclusively from the coordinate space electron density. Numerical illustration of the scheme is provided for the closed-shell atomic systems He, Be and Ne and for $1s^1~2s^1$ singlet electronic excited state for Helium by calculating the Compton profiles and the $$ expectation values derived from given coordinate space electron densities.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

STRESS, A SELF GENERATED PROBLEM-AN AYURVEDIC APPROACH

In the modern era, the high-tech communication facilities, rapid industrialization, sophisticated life style and extensive use of computers have made lives much easier but they are blamed for making the life stressed. It is estimated that 80% of all modern diseases have their origin in stress. Stress and health are closely linked. Constant exposure to stress leads to psycho-somatic disorders affecting immune, cardiovascular and nervous systems. The diseases linked to stress includes heart disease, asthma, allergies, hypertension, diabetes and even cancer. In view of the changing concepts of health and diseases and with the emergence of modern health hazards, attention has been drawn to the holistic concept of Ayurveda. Ayurveda proclaims that the main purpose of human birth is to attain Purusharthas -Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha. To achieve these aims, one needs a healthy body and healthy mind. Ayurveda considers body and mind as inter-related and inter-dependent to each other. Dhi, Dhairya and Atmadi vignynana plays a very important role in the attainment of healthy mind and it in turn contributes a healthy body. Any factor which adversely affects the Sareera, Indriya, Satwa and Athma may lead to ill health either at somatic or psychic level. This review tries to explain how the individuals himself is responsible for stress

Material removal simulation for steel mould polishing

The surface finish of an injection mould influences the quality of the moulded polymer optic parts. In order to improve and control the surface finish of the mould it is important to be able to predict the material removal during the polishing process of this mould. The aim of this work is to predict the material removal during the polishing process, comparing the results obtained from polishing attempts on steel samples and the results obtained from a simulation model. A simulation model is developed with the abrasive wear Holm-Archard equation in ANSYS. This simulation model will help to eliminate the iterative trial and error polishing, therefore facilitating the steel mould production