Interview with Eleanor Burnison

An interview with Eleanor Burnison regarding her experiences in a one-room school house.https://scholars.fhsu.edu/ors/1090/thumbnail.jp

A Noninvasive Brain-Computer Interface for Real-Time Speech Synthesis: The Importance of Multimodal Feedback.

We conducted a study of a motor imagery brain-computer interface (BCI) using electroencephalography to continuously control a formant frequency speech synthesizer with instantaneous auditory and visual feedback. Over a three-session training period, sixteen participants learned to control the BCI for production of three vowel sounds (/ textipa i/ [heed], / textipa A/ [hot], and / textipa u/ [who'd]) and were split into three groups: those receiving unimodal auditory feedback of synthesized speech, those receiving unimodal visual feedback of formant frequencies, and those receiving multimodal, audio-visual (AV) feedback. Audio feedback was provided by a formant frequency artificial speech synthesizer, and visual feedback was given as a 2-D cursor on a graphical representation of the plane defined by the first two formant frequencies. We found that combined AV feedback led to the greatest performance in terms of percent accuracy, distance to target, and movement time to target compared with either unimodal feedback of auditory or visual information. These results indicate that performance is enhanced when multimodal feedback is meaningful for the BCI task goals, rather than as a generic biofeedback signal of BCI progress

Use of Task-Relevant Spoken Word Stimuli in an Auditory Brain-Computer Interface

Auditory brain-computer interfaces (aBCI) may be an effective solution for communication in cases of severely locked-in, late stage ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) and upper spinal cord injury patients who are otherwise not candidates for implanted electrodes. Feasibility of auditory BCI has been shown for both healthy participants, (Hill et al., 2004), and impaired populations (Sellers and Donchin, 2006). (Hill et al., 2014) found similar BCI performance in healthy participants and those with locked-in syndrome in a paradigm comparing words to pure tone stimuli. Additional BCI research has explored variations to augment P300 signals for use in speller paradigms, including more meaningful auditory stimuli (Klobassa et al., 2009; Furdea et al., 2009; Simon et al., 2014). It has been recognized in these studies that end users would much prefer natural sounds over a repeated tone stimulus. All of these systems required an association of sound with target stimuli, typically enforced by a visual support matrix. These systems would not be usable by the target end users of an auditory BCI. At- tempts to remove the need for visual referencing by investigating a BCI system with serial presentation of spoken letter streams as stimuli (Hoehne and Tangermann, 2014) or spoken words (Ferracuti et al., 2013) has met with limited success but presents a potential high speed communication solutions. The present study highlights a method of using BCI task relevant spoken word stimuli to eliminate visually presented references. By utilizing spoken word stimuli, a BCI system could utilize a range of stimuli equivalent to the size of the users vocabulary and provide faster communication out- put than spelling systems. As a control, spoken word stimuli that have no task specific relevance are also tested. Stimuli audio-spatial cues have shown significant improvements in aBCI performance (Käthner et al., 2013; Schreuder et al., 2011). The present study specifically evaluates the potential improvements to BCI performance of semantic and audio-spatial relevance by eliciting auditory oddball P300 responses to task relevant directional stimuli (spoken words: ‘front’, ‘back’, ‘left’, ‘right’). Participants completed several trials of a motivational game with directionally relevant targets over two experimental sessions. Offline analysis of training data was accomplished to evaluate the impact of stimulus characteristics on BCI performance. Questionnaire results on workload, motivation and system usability accurately reflected participant’s BCI performance. A behavioral button press study was utilized to further investigate the influence of spatial cues used in the paradigm, but also highlighted differences in the semantic relevance of the stimuli. Behavioral results correlated with BCI performance. The results of this study indicate task relevant stimuli are a viable option for eliminating artificial and visual stimulus references. This study’s results highlight several considerations for future auditory BCI studies, including: classifier selection, hearing threshold importance, aid of behavioral correlates to BCI performance and use of spatially separated spoken word stimuli

Antagonistic properties of aquatic myxobacteria and pseudomonads

Certain species of the orders Myxobacterales and Pseudo-monadales are well-known antagonists. Pseudomonas fluorescens and Pseudomonas putida have been reported to produce bacteriostatic and bactericidal substances. Among the myxobacteria there are various species which are known for their ability to produce lytic enzymes and antibiotics. Organisms from both of these groups of bacteria are known to occur in the aquatic habitat. During studies on the microbial flora of experimental streams, it was found, at times, that myxobacteria represented a significant proportion of the bacterial population. This suggested that either the environmental conditions favored the growth of these organisms specifically or that inhibiting substances were being produced by these bacteria which prevented the growth of other bacterial species. A number of non-fruiting,fresh-water myxobacterial isolates were found to produce antibiotic substances. This finding was of interest since the production of these substances by non-fruiting myxobacteria has not been previously reported. The antibiotic material had a fairly broad spectrum since it was capable of inhibiting the growth of a variety of different bacterial species. The inhibitory substance produced by one of the isolates was partially purified by ethanol precipitation. This antibiotic was found to be water soluble and heat stable. An association between P. fluorescens and certain aquatic myxobacterial isolates also was suggested from the bacteriological surveys of the experimental streams. One stream had a predominance of pseudomonads and very scant myxobacterial growth in comparison with the other five streams studied. It was therefore of interest to study the interrelationship between these two groups of bacteria. Mixed culture studies showed that myxobacterial growth was markedly inhibited by the presence of certain pseudo-monads. A crude toxic preparation was obtained from one of the pseudomonad isolates. This material was found to exert a bacteriostatic effect on certain myxobacteria. The substance was also inhibitory for Sarcina lutea and Bacillus cereus. The crude toxin was found to be heat stable, water soluble and dialysable

Design and Implementation of a Scalable, Automated, Semi-Permanent Seismic Array for Detecting CO2 Extent during Geologic CO2 Injection

A proof-of-concept demonstration using a scalable, automated, semipermanent, seismic array (SASSA) is being conducted to test a novel seismic method for detecting and tracking an injected CO2plume as it traverses discreet points within a reservoir in southeastern Montana at Bell Creek oil field which is undergoing commercial CO2enhanced oil recovery (EOR). This document serves to describe the technical design of the project infrastructure, the operational approach, corresponding data collection, and data-processing activities

Effects and metabolism of the phenylurea herbicide isoproturon in the submerged macrophyte Ceratophyllum demersum L.

Phenylurea herbicides such as isoproturon (IPU) restrain photosynthesis by connection to the D1 protein in the photosynthetic apparatus in target plants such as weeds in crop fields. Direct effects of herbicides on organisms, which are not a target of the pesticide, have been examined seldom. Since a many of agriculturally used pesticides are found in surface waters in agricultural areas, we determined the effects on the photosynthetic oxygen production of the submerged macrophyte Ceratophyllum demersum using concentrations of IPU ranging from 0.2 μg/L to 200 μg/L IPU. At environmental relevant concentrations of IPU, the photosynthetic oxygen release was impaired. A reduction of the photosynthetic oxygen release showed a time dependency with the assigned herbicide concentrations. Furthermore, this study presents the first indications for metabolism of IPU in the aquatic plant C. demersum

Interdisciplinary views of fNIRS: Current advancements, equity challenges, and an agenda for future needs of a diverse fNIRS research community

Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) is an innovative and promising neuroimaging modality for studying brain activity in real-world environments. While fNIRS has seen rapid advancements in hardware, software, and research applications since its emergence nearly 30 years ago, limitations still exist regarding all three areas, where existing practices contribute to greater bias within the neuroscience research community. We spotlight fNIRS through the lens of different end-application users, including the unique perspective of a fNIRS manufacturer, and report the challenges of using this technology across several research disciplines and populations. Through the review of different research domains where fNIRS is utilized, we identify and address the presence of bias, specifically due to the restraints of current fNIRS technology, limited diversity among sample populations, and the societal prejudice that infiltrates today's research. Finally, we provide resources for minimizing bias in neuroscience research and an application agenda for the future use of fNIRS that is equitable, diverse, and inclusive