Fu-Kane-Mele monopoles in semimetals

Abstract not availableGuo Chuan Thiang, Koji Sato, Kiyonori Gom

DETERMINANT OF LEG SPRING STIFFNESS DURING MAXIMAL HOPPING

Understanding stiffness of the lower extremities during human movement may provide important information for developing more effective training methods during sports activities. It has been reported that leg stiffness (Kleg) during submaximal hopping depends primarily on ankle stiffness (Farley & Morgenroth, 1999), but the way stiffness is regulated in maximal hopping is unknown. The aim of the present study was to investigate a major determinant of the leg stiffness during maximal hopping

Somatosensory evoked potentials that index lateral inhibition are modulated according to the mode of perceptual processing: comparing or combining multi-digit tactile motion

Many perceptual studies focus on the brain’s capacity to discriminate between stimuli. However, our normal experience of the world also involves integrating multiple stimuli into a single perceptual event. Neural mechanisms such as lateral inhibition are believed to enhance local differences between sensory inputs from nearby regions of the receptor surface. However, this mechanism would seem dysfunctional when sensory inputs need to be combined rather than contrasted. Here, we investigated whether the brain can strategically regulate the strength of suppressive interactions that underlie lateral inhibition between finger representations in human somatosensory processing. To do this, we compared sensory processing between conditions that required either comparing or combining information. We delivered two simultaneous tactile motion trajectories to index and middle fingertips of the right hand. Participants had to either compare the directions of the two stimuli, or to combine them to form their average direction. To reveal preparatory tuning of somatosensory cortex, we used an established event-related potential design to measure the interaction between cortical representations evoked by digital nerve shocks immediately before each tactile stimulus. Consistent with previous studies, we found a clear suppression between cortical activations when participants were instructed to compare the tactile motion directions. Importantly, this suppression was significantly reduced when participants had to combine the same stimuli. These findings suggest that the brain can strategically switch between a comparative and a combinative mode of somatosensory processing, according to the perceptual goal, by preparatorily adjusting the strength of a process akin to lateral inhibition

Equivariant differential characters and symplectic reduction

We describe equivariant differential characters (classifying equivariant circle bundles with connections), their prequantization, and reduction

Deep Sequencing of Distinct Preparations of the Live Attenuated Varicella-Zoster Virus Vaccine Reveals a Conserved Core of Attenuating Single-Nucleotide Polymorphisms

The continued success of the live attenuated varicella-zoster virus vaccine in preventing varicella-zoster and herpes zoster is well documented, as are many of the mutations that contribute to the attenuation of the vOka virus for replication in skin. At least three different preparations of vOka are marketed. Here, we show using deep sequencing of seven batches of vOka vaccine (including ZostaVax, VariVax, VarilRix, and the Oka/Biken working seed) from three different manufacturers (VariVax, GSK, and Biken) that 137 single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutations are present in all vaccine batches. This includes six sites at which the vaccine allele is fixed or near fixation, which we speculate are likely to be important for attenuation. We also show that despite differences in the vaccine populations between preparations, batch-to-batch variation is minimal, as is the number and frequency of mutations unique to individual batches. This suggests that the vaccine manufacturing processes are not introducing new mutations and that, notwithstanding the mixture of variants present, VZV live vaccines are extremely stable

The Effect of Substratum Roughness on Osteoclast-like Cells In Vitro

Calcium phosphate powders were used to produce three groups of experimental substrata for the culture of primary rat bone marrow cells in conditions which permitted the survival and function of osteoclasts. Each of the three experimental groups were subdivided by differences in substratum surface roughness and following a culture period of 7 to 11 days, the culture units were stained for tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase activity. In all samples both small, sometimes mononuclear, and large multinucleate cells stained positive for tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase activity and the numbers and types of cells were quantified and statistically analyzed. Following histochemical staining the samples were dehydrated and gold coated for examination by scanning electron microscopy. Cells were found to create distinct resorption lacunae in most substrata, but not on the dense, high temperature sintered hydroxyapatite, and cells responsible for this activity were confirmed as exhibiting positive tartrate resistant acid phosphatase activity. Statistical analyses showed that both the total number of tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase positive cells and the number of multinucleate tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase positive cells was greater on the rougher than the smoother surfaces

World model learning and inference

Understanding information processing in the brain-and creating general-purpose artificial intelligence-are long-standing aspirations of scientists and engineers worldwide. The distinctive features of human intelligence are high-level cognition and control in various interactions with the world including the self, which are not defined in advance and are vary over time. The challenge of building human-like intelligent machines, as well as progress in brain science and behavioural analyses, robotics, and their associated theoretical formalisations, speaks to the importance of the world-model learning and inference. In this article, after briefly surveying the history and challenges of internal model learning and probabilistic learning, we introduce the free energy principle, which provides a useful framework within which to consider neuronal computation and probabilistic world models. Next, we showcase examples of human behaviour and cognition explained under that principle. We then describe symbol emergence in the context of probabilistic modelling, as a topic at the frontiers of cognitive robotics. Lastly, we review recent progress in creating human-like intelligence by using novel probabilistic programming languages. The striking consensus that emerges from these studies is that probabilistic descriptions of learning and inference are powerful and effective ways to create human-like artificial intelligent machines and to understand intelligence in the context of how humans interact with their world

Performance of Multi-Pixel Photon Counters for the T2K near detectors

We have developed a Multi-Pixel Photon Counter (MPPC) for the neutrino detectors of T2K experiment. About 64,000 MPPCs have been produced and tested in about a year. In order to characterize a large number of MPPCs, we have developed a system that simultaneously measures 64 MPPCs with various bias voltage and temperature. The performance of MPPCs are found to satisfy the requirement of T2K experiment. In this paper, we present the performance of 17,686 MPPCs measured at Kyoto University.Comment: 15 pages, 14 figure

Application of Hamamatsu MPPC to T2K Neutrino Detectors

A special type of Hamamatsu MPPC, with a sensitive area of 1.3x1.3mm^2 containing 667 pixels with 50x50um^2 each, has been developed for the near neutrino detector in the T2K long baseline neutrino experiment. About 60 000 MPPCs will be used in total to read out the plastic scintillator detectors with wavelength shifting fibers. We report on the basic performance of MPPCs produced for T2K.Comment: Contribution to the proceedings of NDIP 2008, Aix-les-Bains, France, June 15-20, 200

Transient dynamics for sequence processing neural networks

An exact solution of the transient dynamics for a sequential associative memory model is discussed through both the path-integral method and the statistical neurodynamics. Although the path-integral method has the ability to give an exact solution of the transient dynamics, only stationary properties have been discussed for the sequential associative memory. We have succeeded in deriving an exact macroscopic description of the transient dynamics by analyzing the correlation of crosstalk noise. Surprisingly, the order parameter equations of this exact solution are completely equivalent to those of the statistical neurodynamics, which is an approximation theory that assumes crosstalk noise to obey the Gaussian distribution. In order to examine our theoretical findings, we numerically obtain cumulants of the crosstalk noise. We verify that the third- and fourth-order cumulants are equal to zero, and that the crosstalk noise is normally distributed even in the non-retrieval case. We show that the results obtained by our theory agree with those obtained by computer simulations. We have also found that the macroscopic unstable state completely coincides with the separatrix.Comment: 21 pages, 4 figure