Autonomous behaviour and the limits of human volition.

Humans and some other animals can autonomously generate action choices that contribute to solving complex problems. However, experimental investigations of the cognitive bases of human autonomy are challenging, because experimental paradigms typically constrain behaviour using controlled contexts, and elicit behaviour by external triggers. In contrast, autonomy and freedom imply unconstrained behaviour initiated by endogenous triggers. Here we propose a new theoretical construct of adaptive autonomy, meaning the capacity to make behavioural choices that are free from constraints of both immediate external triggers and of routine response patterns, but nevertheless show appropriate coordination with the environment. Participants (N = 152) played a competitive game in which they had to choose the right time to act, in the face of an opponent who punished (in separate blocks) either choice biases (such as always responding early), sequential patterns of action timing across trials (such as early, late, early, late…), or predictable action-outcome dependence (such as win-stay, lose-shift). Adaptive autonomy was quantified as the ability to maintain performance when each of these influences on action selection was punished. We found that participants could become free from habitual choices regarding when to act and could also become free from sequential action patterns. However, they were not able to free themselves from influences of action-outcome dependence, even when these resulted in poor performance. These results point to a new concept of autonomous behaviour as flexible adaptation of voluntary action choices in a way that avoids stereotypy. In a sequential analysis, we also demonstrated that participants increased their reliance on belief learning in which they attempt to understand the competitor's beliefs and intentions, when transition bias and reinforcement bias were punished. Taken together, our study points to a cognitive mechanism of adaptive autonomy in which competitive interactions with other agents could promote both social cognition and volition in the form of non-stereotyped action choices

Measuring the dark matter equation of state

The nature of the dominant component of galaxies and clusters remains unknown. While the astrophysics community supports the cold dark matter (CDM) paradigm as a clue factor in the current cosmological model, no direct CDM detections have been performed. Faber and Visser 2006 have suggested a simple method for measuring the dark matter equation of state that combines kinematic and gravitational lensing data to test the widely adopted assumption of pressureless dark matter. Following this formalism, we have measured the dark matter equation of state for first time using improved techniques. We have found that the value of the equation of state parameter is consistent with pressureless dark matter within the errors. Nevertheless, the measured value is lower than expected because typically the masses determined with lensing are larger than those obtained through kinematic methods. We have tested our techniques using simulations and we have also analyzed possible sources of error that could invalidate or mimic our results. In the light of this result, we can now suggest that the understanding of the nature of dark matter requires a complete general relativistic analysis.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, accepted for publication in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters. Minor revision as suggested by refere

The ESSnuSB design study: overview and future prospects

Artículo escrito por un elevado número de autores, solo se referencian el que aparece en primer lugar, los autores pertenecientes a la UAM y el nombre del grupo de colaboración, si lo hubiereESSnuSB is a design study for an experiment to measure the CP violation in the leptonic sector at the second neutrino oscillation maximum using a neutrino beam driven by the uniquely powerful ESS linear accelerator. The reduced impact of systematic errors on sensitivity at the second maximum allows for a very precise measurement of the CP violating parameter. This review describes the fundamental advantages of measurement at the second maximum, the necessary upgrades to the ESS linac in order to produce a neutrino beam, the near and far detector complexes, and the expected physics reach of the proposed ESSnuSB experiment, concluding with the near future developments aimed at the project realizationThis project has been supported by the COST Action EuroNuNet: “Combining forces for a novel European facility for neutrino-antineutrino symmetry-violation discovery”. It has also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 777419. We acknowledge further support provided by the following research funding agencies: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules, France; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Germany, Projektnummer 423761110; Agencia Estatal de Investigacion through the grants IFT Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa, Spain, contract No. CEX2020-001007-S and PID2019-108892RB funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033; Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, grant No. W129/H2020/2018, with the science resources for the years 2018–2021 for the realisation of a cofunded project; Ministry of Science and Education of Republic of Croatia grant No. KK.01.1.1.01.0001; Çukurova University Scientific Research Projects Unit, Grant no: FUA-2021-12628; as well as support provided by the universities and laboratories to which the authors of this report are affiliated, see the author list on the first page. Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for the

Energy levels of few electron quantum dots imaged and characterized by atomic force microscopy

Strong confinement of charges in few electron systems such as in atoms, molecules and quantum dots leads to a spectrum of discrete energy levels that are often shared by several degenerate quantum states. Since the electronic structure is key to understanding their chemical properties, methods that probe these energy levels in situ are important. We show how electrostatic force detection using atomic force microscopy reveals the electronic structure of individual and coupled self-assembled quantum dots. An electron addition spectrum in the Coulomb blockade regime, resulting from a change in cantilever resonance frequency and dissipation during tunneling events, shows one by one electron charging of a dot. The spectra show clear level degeneracies in isolated quantum dots, supported by the first observation of predicted temperature-dependent shifts of Coulomb blockade peaks. Further, by scanning the surface we observe that several quantum dots may reside on what topologically appears to be just one. These images of grouped weakly and strongly coupled dots allow us to estimate their relative coupling strengths.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

A legal compliance as a forest inductor? The possible role of non-timber forest products in ecological and economic forests in Brazil.

Autoria: CARVALHAES, M. [i.e. A.], Mariana Aparecida Carvalhaes. WFC2015

Investigation of Social Supports for Parents of Children with Autism

There has been an increase of children being identified with autism in the United States (Center for Disease Control, 2009), leading to an increased concern of how to best meet the needs of children with autism and their families. In response to each reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (2004), in which the roles of families have been strengthened in planning their child\u27s education and professionals have had more input, the field has tried to uncover the \u27best\u27 ways to support parents. Recommended practice suggests that parents are best able to identify their own support needs, with assistance from professionals in identifying supports to assist with these needs (Murray et al., 2007). The focus of this study was to identify the forms of social support that parents of children recently diagnosed with autism perceive as being important. Twenty parents of children recently diagnosed with autism participated in this study. These parents completed a Q-sort using the forms of social support, which allowed for a ranking from most to least important. Statistically significant correlations were found on five support items. Factor analysis was conducted to explore groups of participants with similar rankings of the Q sort items

Perguntamos: qual o diagnóstico?

Centro de Medicina Diagnóstica FleuryUniversidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP)University of British ColumbiaUNIFESPSciEL

Spectroscopic confirmation of z~7 LBGs: probing the earliest galaxies and the epoch of reionization

We present the final results from our ultra-deep spectroscopic campaign with FORS2 at the ESO/VLT for the confirmation of z~7 "z--band dropout" candidates selected from our VLT/Hawk-I imaging survey over three independent fields. In particular we report on two newly discovered galaxies at redshift ~6.7 in the NTT deep field: both galaxies show a Ly-alpha emission line with rest-frame EWs of the order 15-20 A and luminosities of 2-4 X 10^{42} erg/s. We also present the results of ultra-deep observations of a sample of i-dropout galaxies, from which we set a solid upper limit on the fraction of interlopers. Out of the 20 z-dropouts observed we confirm 5 galaxies at 6.7 < z < 7.1. This is systematically below the expectations drawn on the basis of lower redshift observations: in particular there is a significant lack of objects with intermediate Ly-alpha EWs (between 20 and 55 A). We conclude that the trend for the fraction of Ly-alpha emission in LBGs that is constantly increasing from z~3 to z~6 is most probably reversed from z~6 to z~7. Explaining the observed rapid change in the LAE fraction among the drop-out population with reionization requires a fast evolution of the neutral fraction of hydrogen in the Universe. Assuming that the Universe is completely ionized at z=6 and adopting the semi-analytical models of Dijkstra et al. (2011), we find that our data require a change of the neutral hydrogen fraction of the order Delta chi_{HI} ~ 0.6 in a time Delta z ~ 1, provided that the escape fraction does not increase dramatically over the same redshift interval.Comment: Submitted to Ap