Strain gauge ambiguity sensor for segmented mirror active optical system

A system is described to measure alignment between interfacing edges of mirror segments positioned to form a segmented mirror surface. It serves as a gauge having a bending beam with four piezoresistive elements coupled across the interfaces of the edges of adjacent mirror segments. The bending beam has a first position corresponding to alignment of the edges of adjacent mirror segments, and it is bendable from the first position in a direction and to a degree dependent upon the relative misalignment between the edges of adjacent mirror segments to correspondingly vary the resistance of the strain guage. A source of power and an amplifier are connected in circuit with the strain gauge whereby the output of the amplifier varies according to the misalignment of the edges of adjacent mirror segments

Manipulating Memory Associations Changes Decision-making Preferences in a Preconditioning Task

Memories of past experiences can guide our decisions. Thus, if memories are undermined or distorted, decision making should be affected. Nevertheless, little empirical research has been done to examine the role of memory in reinforcement decision-making . We hypothesized that if memories guide choices in a conditioning decision-making task, then manipulating these memories would result in a change of decision preferences to gain reward. We manipulated participants’ memories by providing false feedback that their memory associations were wrong before they made decisions that could lead them to win money . Participants’ memory ratings decreased significantly after receiving false feedback. More importantly, we found that false feedback led participants’ decision bias to disappear after their memory associations were undermined . Our results suggest that reinforcement decision-making can be altered by fasle feedback on memories . The results are discussed using memory mechanisms such as spreading activation theories

Identifying the challenges and facilitators of implementing a COPD care bundle.

BACKGROUND: Care bundles have been shown to improve outcomes, reduce hospital readmissions and reduce length of hospital stay; therefore increasing the speed of uptake and delivery of care bundles should be a priority in order to deliver more timely improvements and consistent high-quality care. Previous studies have detailed the difficulties of obtaining full compliance to bundle elements but few have described the underlying reasons for this. In order to improve future implementation this paper investigates the challenges encountered by clinical teams implementing a chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) care bundle and describes actions taken to overcome these challenges. METHODS: An initial retrospective documentary analysis of data from seven clinical implementation teams was undertaken to review the challenges faced by the clinical teams. Three focus groups with healthcare professionals and managers explored solutions to these challenges developed during the project. RESULTS: Documentary analysis identified 28 challenges which directly impacted implementation of the COPD care bundle within five themes; staffing, infrastructure, process, use of improvement methodology and patient and public involvement. Focus groups revealed that the five most significant challenges for all groups were: staff too busy, staff shortages, lack of staff engagement, added workload of the bundle and patient coding issues. The participants shared facilitating factors used to overcome issues including: shifting perceptions to improve engagement, further education sessions to increase staff participation and gaining buy-in from managers through payment frameworks. CONCLUSIONS: Maximising the impact of a care bundle relies on its successful and timely implementation. Teams implementing the COPD care bundle encountered challenges that were common to all teams and sites. Understanding and learning from the challenges faced by previous endeavours and identifying the facilitators to overcoming these barriers provides an opportunity to mitigate issues that waste time and resources, and ensures that training can be tailored to the anticipated challenges

Discrete emotion-congruent false memories in the DRM paradigm

Research has shown that false memory production is enhanced for material that is emotionally congruent with the mood of the participant at the time of encoding. So far this research has only examined the influence of generic negative affective mood states and generic negative stimuli on false memory production. In addition, much of the research is limited as it focuses on valence and arousal dimensions, and fails to take into account the more comprehensive nature of emotions. The current study demonstrates that this effect goes beyond general negative or positive moods and acts at a more discrete emotional level. Participants underwent a standard emotion induction procedure before listening to negative emotional or neutral associative word lists. The emotions induced, negative word lists and associated non-presented critical lures, were related to either fear or anger, two negative valence emotions that are also both high in arousal. Results showed that when valence and arousal are controlled for, false memories are more likely to be produced for discrete emotionally congruent compared to incongruent materials. These results support spreading activation theories of false remembering and add to our understanding of the adaptive nature of false memory production

Priming Older Adults and People with Alzheimer’s Disease Analogical Problem Solving with True and False Memories

We investigated the extent to which activation of specific information in associative networks during a memory task could facilitate subsequent analogical problem solving in healthy older adults as well as those with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. We also examined whether these priming effects were stronger when the activation of the critical solution term during the memory task occurred when the item was actually presented (true memories) or when this item arose due to spreading activation to a related but nonpresented item (false memory). Older adult controls (OACs) and people with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) were asked to solve 9 verbal proportional analogies, 3 of which had been primed by Deese/Roediger-McDermott lists where the critical lure (and problem solution) was presented as a word in the list (true memory), 3 of which were primed by DRM lists whose critical lures were spontaneously activated during list presentation (false memory), and 3 of which were unprimed. As expected, OACs were better (both in terms of speed and accuracy) at solving problems than people with AD and both groups were better when false memories were primes than when true memories were primes or there were no primes. There were no reliable differences between unprimed and true prime problems. These findings demonstrate that (a) priming of problem solutions extends to verbal proportional analogies in OACs and people with AD, (b) false memories are more effective at priming problem solutions than true memories, and (c) there are clear positive consequences to the production of false memories

Radiation reaction and renormalization in classical electrodynamics of point particle in any dimension

The effective equations of motion for a point charged particle taking account of radiation reaction are considered in various space-time dimensions. The divergencies steaming from the pointness of the particle are studied and the effective renormalization procedure is proposed encompassing uniformly the cases of all even dimensions. It is shown that in any dimension the classical electrodynamics is a renormalizable theory if not multiplicatively beyond d=4. For the cases of three and six dimensions the covariant analogs of the Lorentz-Dirac equation are explicitly derived.Comment: minor changes in concluding section, misprints corrected, LaTeX2e, 15 page

Biological and physical oceanographic observations pertaining to the trawl fishery in a region of persistent coastal upwelling

An upwelling episode in the Point Sal region of the central California coast is examined by using data obtained by a data buoy. The episodes was interrupted by the abrupt abatement of the strong wind which promotes coastal upwelling. The mean hourly upwelling index is calculated to be higher than the 20 year mean monthly value. During 3 days of light wind commercial bottom trawl operations were possible. Shipboard estimates of chlorophyll content in surface waters during trawling show the high concentrations that are indicative of a rich biomass of phytoplankton, a result of the upwelling episode. Satellite imagery shows the extent of the upwelling water to be of the order of 100 km offshore; the result of many upwelling episodes. Shipboard echo sounder data show the presence of various delmersal species and of zooplakton; the latter graze on the phytoplankton in the upper euphotic layers. The fish catch data are recorded according to species for 2 days of trawling, and the catch per trawl hour is recorded

Two-Dimensional Helioseismic Power, Phase, and Coherence Spectra of {\it Solar Dynamics Observatory} Photospheric and Chromospheric Observables

While the {\it Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager} (HMI) onboard the {\it Solar Dynamics Observatory} (SDO) provides Doppler velocity [$V$], continuum intensity [$I_C$], and line-depth [$Ld$] observations, each of which is sensitive to the five-minute acoustic spectrum, the {\it Atmospheric Imaging Array} (AIA) also observes at wavelengths -- specifically the 1600 and 1700 Angstrom bands -- that are partly formed in the upper photosphere and have good sensitivity to acoustic modes. In this article we consider the characteristics of the spatio--temporal Fourier spectra in AIA and HMI observables for a 15-degree region around NOAA Active Region 11072. We map the spatio--temporal-power distribution for the different observables and the HMI Line Core [$I_L$], or Continuum minus Line Depth, and the phase and coherence functions for selected observable pairs, as a function of position and frequency. Five-minute oscillation power in all observables is suppressed in the sunspot and also in plage areas. Above the acoustic cut-off frequency, the behaviour is more complicated: power in HMI $I_C$ is still suppressed in the presence of surface magnetic fields, while power in HMI $I_L$ and the AIA bands is suppressed in areas of surface field but enhanced in an extended area around the active region, and power in HMI $V$ is enhanced in a narrow zone around strong-field concentrations and suppressed in a wider surrounding area. The relative phase of the observables, and their cross-coherence functions, are also altered around the active region. These effects may help us to understand the interaction of waves and magnetic fields in the different layers of the photosphere, and will need to be taken into account in multi-wavelength local helioseismic analysis of active regions.Comment: 18 pages, 15 figures, to be published in Solar Physic

Negative feedback control of jasmonate signaling by an alternative splice variant of JAZ10

The plant hormone jasmonate (JA) activates gene expression by promoting ubiquitin-dependent degradation of JAZ transcriptional repressor proteins. A key feature of all JAZ proteins is the highly conserved Jas motif, which mediates both JAZ degradation and JAZ binding to the transcription factor MYC2. Rapid expression of JAZ genes in response to JA is thought to attenuate JA responses, but little is known about the mechanisms by which newly synthesized JAZ proteins exert repression in the presence of the hormone. Here, we show that desensitization to JA is mediated by an alternative splice variant (JAZ10.4) of JAZ10 that lacks the Jas motif. Unbiased protein-protein interaction screens identified three related bHLH transcription factors (MYC2, MYC3, and MYC4) and the co-repressor NINJA as JAZ10.4-binding partners. We show that the N-terminal region of JAZ10.4 contains a cryptic MYC2-binding site that resembles the Jas motif, and that the ZIM motif of JAZ10.4 functions as a transferable repressor domain whose activity is associated with recruitment of NINJA. Functional studies showed that expression of JAZ10.4 from the native JAZ10 promoter complemented the JA-hypersensitive phenotype of a jaz10 mutant. Moreover, treatment of these complemented lines with JA resulted in rapid accumulation of JAZ10.4 protein. Our results provide an explanation for how the unique domain architecture of JAZ10.4 links transcription factors to a co-repressor complex, and suggest how JA-induced transcription and alternative splicing of JAZ10 pre-mRNA creates a regulatory circuit to attenuate JA responses.Fil: Moreno, Javier Edgardo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Santa Fe. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral. Universidad Nacional del Litoral. Instituto de Agrobiotecnología del Litoral; Argentina. Michigan State University; Estados UnidosFil: Shyu, Christine. Michigan State University; Estados UnidosFil: Campos, Marcelo L.. Michigan State University; Estados UnidosFil: Patel, Lalita C.. Michigan State University; Estados UnidosFil: Chung, Hoo Sun. Michigan State University; Estados UnidosFil: Yao, Jian. Michigan State University; Estados UnidosFil: He, Sheng Hang. Michigan State University; Estados UnidosFil: Howe, Gregg A.. Michigan State University; Estados Unido