Stop paying attention: the need for explicit stopping in inhibitory control

Inhibitory control, the ability to stop inappropriate actions, isan important cognitive function often investigated via the stop-signal task, in which an infrequent stop signal instructs the sub-ject to stop a default go response. Previously, we proposed arational decision-making model for stopping, suggesting theobserver makes a repeated Go versus Wait choice at each in-stant, so that a Stop response is realized by repeatedly choosingto Wait. We propose an alternative model here that incorpo-rates a third choice, Stop. Critically, unlike the Wait action,choosing the Stop action not only blocks a Go response at thecurrent moment but also for the remainder of the trial – thedisadvantage of losing this flexibility is balanced by the bene-fit of not having to pay attention anymore. We show that thisnew model both reproduces known behavioral effects and hasinternal dynamics resembling presumed Go neural activationsin the brain

Economics of neuraminidase inhibitor stock piling for pandemic influenza, Singapore.

We compared strategies for stock piling neuraminidase inhibitors to treat and prevent influenza in Singapore. Cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses, with Monte Carlo simulations, were used to determine economic outcomes. A pandemic in a population of 4.2 million would result in an estimated 525-1,775 deaths, 10,700-38,600 hospitalization days, and economic costs of 0.7 dollars to 2.2 billion Singapore dollars. The treatment-only strategy had optimal economic benefits: stock piles of antiviral agents for 40% of the population would save an estimated 418 lives and 414 million dollars, at a cost of 52.6 million dollars per shelf-life cycle of the stock pile. Prophylaxis was economically beneficial in high-risk subpopulations, which account for 78% of deaths, and in pandemics in which the death rate was >0.6%. Prophylaxis for pandemics with a 5% case-fatality rate would save 50,000 lives and 81 billion dollars. These models can help policymakers weigh the options for pandemic planning

Opening the Vocabulary of Egocentric Actions

Human actions in egocentric videos are often hand-object interactions composed from a verb (performed by the hand) applied to an object. Despite their extensive scaling up, egocentric datasets still face two limitations - sparsity of action compositions and a closed set of interacting objects. This paper proposes a novel open vocabulary action recognition task. Given a set of verbs and objects observed during training, the goal is to generalize the verbs to an open vocabulary of actions with seen and novel objects. To this end, we decouple the verb and object predictions via an object-agnostic verb encoder and a prompt-based object encoder. The prompting leverages CLIP representations to predict an open vocabulary of interacting objects. We create open vocabulary benchmarks on the EPIC-KITCHENS-100 and Assembly101 datasets; whereas closed-action methods fail to generalize, our proposed method is effective. In addition, our object encoder significantly outperforms existing open-vocabulary visual recognition methods in recognizing novel interacting objects.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures; https://dibschat.github.io/openvocab-egoAR

Rhode Island’s Health Equity Zones: Addressing Local Problems with Local Solutions

The Rhode Island Department of Health (RIDOH) describes the strategies and infrastructure it has developed to fund its placed-based initiatives to address the social determinants of health to eliminate health disparities. Using a data driven and community-led approach, RIDOH funded 10 local collaboratives, each with its own, geographically-defined “Health Equity Zone,” or “HEZ,” and, to support the collaboratives, created a new “Health Equity Institute,” a “HEZ Team” of 9 seasoned project managers, and direct lines of communications between these assets and the Office of the Director of Health

Complaint Management in the Public Sector Organization in the Philippines

Participatory governance is a democratic process intended to involve citizens in the management of public institution. By providing them platforms through which they can access the government, transparency and accountability in public governance is enhanced.  The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) acknowledges its importance through the establishment of different platforms of communications wherein clients can raise their concerns.  The study aims at   describing and evaluating the Complaints Management Program of the DPWH Nueva Ecija 2nd District Engineering Office based in Cabanatuan City. The analysis was drawn from Fifteen (15) client feedbacks received in 2017.  The   data were gathered using qualitative and quantitative approaches while multi-stakeholders framework for complaint management was adapted to measure the effectiveness of the feedback and complaint management mechanisms of the agency. The study  found that the agency : a)  institutionalizes and observes procedures in handling complaints; b) resolves complaints based on the principles of fairness, accessibility, responsiveness, efficiency , trust and citizens participation; however, there are limitations identified in regard to the administrative support in terms of  personnel assigned, training and availability of vehicle  use to verify various complaints on the ground. Civic engagement is an effective tool to promote democracy and enhance open government. They are proven to create enabling   environment  that tends to yield positive   political outcomes and policy implementation results. Keywords: Participatory governance, Complaint management ,Feedback mechanism, DPWH –Philippines DOI: 10.7176/PPAR/9-2-0

An Active Noise Control System Based on Soundfield Interpolation Using a Physics-informed Neural Network

Conventional multiple-point active noise control (ANC) systems require placing error microphones within the region of interest (ROI), inconveniencing users. This paper designs a feasible monitoring microphone arrangement placed outside the ROI, providing a user with more freedom of movement. The soundfield within the ROI is interpolated from the microphone signals using a physics-informed neural network (PINN). PINN exploits the acoustic wave equation to assist soundfield interpolation under a limited number of monitoring microphones, and demonstrates better interpolation performance than the spherical harmonic method in simulations. An ANC system is designed to take advantage of the interpolated signal to reduce noise signal within the ROI. The PINN-assisted ANC system reduces noise more than that of the multiple-point ANC system in simulations

A Statistical Approach to the Alignment of fMRI Data

Multi-subject functional Magnetic Resonance Image studies are critical. The anatomical and functional structure varies across subjects, so the image alignment is necessary. We define a probabilistic model to describe functional alignment. Imposing a prior distribution, as the matrix Fisher Von Mises distribution, of the orthogonal transformation parameter, the anatomical information is embedded in the estimation of the parameters, i.e., penalizing the combination of spatially distant voxels. Real applications show an improvement in the classification and interpretability of the results compared to various functional alignment methods

Tilings, Patterns and Technology

In this paper we discuss various situations where tilings and patterns, with the aid of technology, facilitate the teaching of mathematics and serve as tools in understanding and developing new mathematical ideas. We also illustrate how technology makes possible cultural connections in the study of mathematics using Islamic tilings and patterns