Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) art in care of ageing society: focus on dementia

open access articleBackground: Art enhances both physical and mental health wellbeing. The health benefits include reduction in blood pressure, heart rate, pain perception and briefer inpatient stays, as well as improvement of communication skills and self-esteem. In addition to these, people living with dementia benefit from reduction of their noncognitive, behavioural changes, enhancement of their cognitive capacities and being socially active. Methods: The current study represents a narrative general literature review on available studies and knowledge about contribution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in creative arts. Results: We review AI visual arts technologies, and their potential for use among people with dementia and care, drawing on similar experiences to date from traditional art in dementia care. Conclusion: The virtual reality, installations and the psychedelic properties of the AI created art provide a new venue for more detailed research about its therapeutic use in dementia

Influence of the physical environment and conspecific aggression on the spatial arrangement of breeding grey seals

Understanding the habitat requirements of a species for breeding is essential for its conservation, particularly if the availability of suitable habitat is a limiting factor for population growth. This is postulated to be the case for grey seals, one of the more abundant marine apex predators in northern European waters. In common with similar studies that have investigated the habitat preferences of breeding grey seals, we use abiotic (topographical, climatological) attributes but, unlike previous work, we also incorporate behavioural variables, particularly the occurrence of aggressive interactions between females and the presence of neighbouring seals. We used two Generalized Additive Models (GAM) in a sequential and iterative fashion. The first model links the occurrence of aggression at particular points in the colony to local topography derived from a Geographical Information System (GIS), presence of neighbouring seal pups and the day of the breeding season. The output of this GAM is used as one of the explanatory variables in a GAM of daily variation in the spatial distribution of births. Although proximity of a birth site to a water source and the presence of neighbouring seal pups both had significant influences on the distribution of newborn pups over time and space, at the scale of the study site it was found that simple rules could predict pup distribution more efficiently than a complex individual-based simulation model. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.PostprintPeer reviewe

Investigation of the Printing Evaluation of Gloss Ink Holdout of Finished Papers

Gloss ink holdout is a description of an end result of a process involving many variables. The variables are the receptivity or absorbancy of the sheet for ink, the rate of penetration of the ink into the sheet, and the amount and type of ink used. This experiment kept the amount and type of ink constant and looked at the absorbancy of the sheet and the penetration of the ink into the sheet. The IGT Printability Tester was used to apply the ink, an infrared heat lamp to dry the sample, and the Hunter lab Glossmeter to measure the gloss. The sample sheets were evaluated after different ink penetration periods. The results showed that as penetration time increased the ink gloss decreased. The longer the ink was on the press, the lower the ink gloss. Also the amount of adhesive in the coating and the type of sheet, whether offset, letterpress, or rotogravure, influences the results

Effect of Duration of Play on Injury Rate in Men\u27s and Women\u27s NCAA Sport

Injury rates increase with added athletic exposures. Mental and physical fatigue is potentially a component of this increase. However, large scale exposure-related injury trends by injury type, sport and sex are scarce. Consequently, the aim of this thesis was to determine whether injury rates are higher later in games and whether these rates vary with respect to sport, injury type and sex. NCAA injury data collected by the Datalys Center for Sports Injury Research and Prevention indicate that relative injury frequency increases in subsequent periods and this increase is uniform across sports. Subsequent period relative injury frequencies were greater in women and concussions and spasms showed the greatest subsequent period and sex (women greater than men) bias. This thesis is the first large scale report to show that injury rate increases with prolonged exposure and warrants further investigation into the relationship between other components of fatigue and specific injuries like concussion

Working with Randy: the diacylglycerol acyltransferase story

Vegetable oils are one of the main agricultural commodities. Demand has been increasing steadily over the last five decades and, with finite land available, it is vital that we increase productivity. My laboratory has focused on the regulation of plant lipid metabolism and, as part of this work, we identified diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT) as important at regulating carbon flux during oil accumulation. This led to collaborations with Randy Weselake's research group when we quantified the importance of DGAT in oilseed rape by using flux control analysis. Later, with David Taylor, we showed that over‐expression of DGAT boosted oil accumulation in field‐grown crops by around 8%. These studies led to a multitude of experiments with different oil crops, such as oil palm and soybean, as well as many rewarding collaborations with Randy

The effects of COAG's national reform agenda on central agencies

This report examines the effect on Commonwealth and State central agencies of the reform agenda adopted by the Council of Australian Governments (COAG), with a particular focus on the reforms proposed and undertaken since the federal election in November 2007. Collectively, these reforms could constitute the most significant changes to Australian federalism in a generation. This study considers the responses of central agencies to this COAG Reform Agenda. How are the Commonwealth and State central agencies responding, and what challenges do they face

Influence of diluent alkyl substitution on the extraction of Am(III) and Eu(III) by a 6,6’-bis(1,2,4-triazin-3-yl)-2,2’-bipyridine ligand dissolved in alkylated cyclohexanone Diluents

Several alkylated cyclohexanones were investigated as potential diluents for the selective extraction of Am(III) from Eu(III) from nitric acid solutions by the CyMe4-BTBP ligand. No significant extraction of either of the metal ions was observed for these diluents themselves. In the extractions from 1 M HNO3, 3-methylcyclohexanone and 4-methylcyclohexanone gave comparable results to cyclohexanone whereas in the extractions from 4 M HNO3, 2-methylcyclohexanone, 3-methylcyclohexanone and 4-methylcyclohexanone all gave superior results. For the monomethylated diluents, DAm and SFAm/Eu decreased in the order of alkyl substitution 2 > 4 ~ 3. However, alkyl substitution of cyclohexanone significantly slows down the extraction kinetics compared to cyclohexanone, and the position of alkyl substitution was found to play an important role in the solvents properties. 3-Methylcyclohexanone was identified as the most promising of the diluent

Embedding Population Dynamics Models in Inference

Increasing pressures on the environment are generating an ever-increasing need to manage animal and plant populations sustainably, and to protect and rebuild endangered populations. Effective management requires reliable mathematical models, so that the effects of management action can be predicted, and the uncertainty in these predictions quantified. These models must be able to predict the response of populations to anthropogenic change, while handling the major sources of uncertainty. We describe a simple ``building block'' approach to formulating discrete-time models. We show how to estimate the parameters of such models from time series of data, and how to quantify uncertainty in those estimates and in numbers of individuals of different types in populations, using computer-intensive Bayesian methods. We also discuss advantages and pitfalls of the approach, and give an example using the British grey seal population.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000673 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Oxidation of polyunsaturated fatty acids to produce lipid mediators

The chemistry, biochemistry, pharmacology and molecular biology of oxylipins (defined as a family of oxygenated natural products that are formed from unsaturated fatty acids by pathways involving at least one step of dioxygen-dependent oxidation) are complex and occasionally contradictory subjects that continue to develop at an extraordinarily rapid rate. The term includes docosanoids (e.g. protectins, resolvins and maresins, or specialized pro-resolving mediators), eicosanoids and octadecanoids and plant oxylipins, which are derived from either the omega-6 (n-6) or the omega-3 (n-3) families of polyunsaturated fatty acids. For example, the term eicosanoid is used to embrace those biologically active lipid mediators that are derived from C20 fatty acids, and include prostaglandins, thromboxanes, leukotrienes, hydroxyeicosatetraenoic acids and related oxygenated derivatives. The keyenzymesfortheproductionofprostanoidsareprostaglandinendoperoxideHsynthases (cyclo-oxygenases), while lipoxygenases and oxidases of the cytochrome P450 family produce numerous other metabolites. In plants, the lipoxygenase pathway from C18 polyunsaturated fatty acids yields a variety of important products, especially the jasmonates, which havesomecomparablestructuralfeaturesandfunctions.Relatedoxylipinsareproducedby non-enzymicmeans(isoprostanes),whilefattyacidestersofhydroxyfattyacids(FAHFA)are now being considered together with the oxylipins from a functional perspective. In all kingdoms of life, oxylipins usually act as lipid mediators through specific receptors, have short half-lives and have functions in innumerable biological contexts