Exploitation, Fear and Restitution: The Story of Tuluwat Today

Genocide continues to have everlasting effects on the it’s victims across the globe. In Humboldt county one of the most harrowing atrocities was the massacre of 1860 on Tuluwat island. In 2019 the City of Eureka returned the island to the Wiyot Tribe because of Tuluwat’s cultural significance to the local Native population. The following narrative details my personal experiences and research delving into the lasting effects of this mass murder, the way it’s story is told now and the reparations being made today. While doing this I learned more about the island through personal testimonies, local signage and attending local events

Design and control of the energy management system of a smart vehicle

This thesis demonstrates the design of two high efficiency controllers, one non-predictive and the other predictive, that can be used in both parallel and power-split connected plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Simulation models of three different commercially available vehicles are developed from measured data for necessary testing and comparisons of developed controllers. Results prove that developed controllers perform better than the existing controllers in terms of efficiency, fuel consumption, and emissions

Hidden Depths in the Hippocampal Circuitry

No abstract available

A Combined High-Efficiency Region Controller to Improve Fuel Consumption of Power-Split HEVs

An improved controller for the energy management system of a power-split hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) is developed with the objectives of minimizing fuel consumption and improving drivability. Considering the specific application of vehicles plying on scheduled trips such as public transport, this paper assumes that the controller is privileged with a priori knowledge of the estimated total tractive energy requirement and the duration of the journey. In comparison to a recently introduced constant high-efficiency region (CHER)-based controller, this paper demonstrates that further reductions in fuel consumption can be achieved under certain driving cycles by limiting the internal-combustion-engine (ICE) operation to a dynamically varying high-efficiency region and adopting state-of-charge (SOC) swing control for battery energy storage. The frequency of engine on/off is therefore directly decided by the size of the energy storage, allowable swing of the SOC, and the tractive energy required. Performances of the CHER and dynamic high-efficiency region (DHER) controllers are compared through simulations against the existing controller of a commercial vehicle. The results reveal that the DHER controller outperforms the other two controllers in terms of fuel consumption in highway-style-driving scenarios. Therefore, to minimize fuel consumption while improving drivability under all driving scenarios, this paper proposes to combine the CHER controller with the DHER controller such that the best features of both controllers can be utilized

A Novel Model of Internal Combustion Engine for High Efficiency Operation of Hybrid Electric Vehicles and Power Systems

This article realizes a novel model of an internal combustion engine (ICE) based on its operating torque and speed for the purpose of designing new control strategies to optimize engine efficiency and performance in hybrid electric vehicles and power systems. The proposed model is developed such that it utilizes only a limited number of experimentally measured operating conditions of the internal combustion engine. Therefore it helps in minimizing the expensive and time consuming testing of the vehicle under a large number of operating conditions in comparison to other models. On the other hand, it is possible to utilise the model to determine a novel control strategy for fuel consumption reduction in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). This fuel consumption reduction is achieved through the use of the proposed model to predict the efficiency of operation of the ICE instead of the fuel utilization predicted by conventional models. In order to prove the accuracy of the proposed model, efficiency of operation of six known ICEs have been modelled and compared with three existing models utilizing larger numbers of experimental data. The errors in efficiency in comparison to known data are found to be within a reasonable range. The paper finally demonstrates the possible applications of the proposed model in high efficiency control of ICE in a model of the 2010 Toyota Prius developed using experimental data. The demonstration for the proposed model is in the form of a vehicular system however it is envisaged that this model has applications in hybrid power systems also

Design of the experimental setup for a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle

This paper identifies the procedure utilized to determine the required ratings of components for the experimental setup of a 2 by 2 power-split connected plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. The test vehicle considered for this project has been selected from the available small scale conventionally driven vehicles in Western Australia. The main criteria for vehicle selection required that an existing electrical network was available, with alternator and battery and that the chassis has significant space and supportable structure for the coupling of an electric motor to the driveshaft. Following the selection of the vehicle the appropriate sizing of electrical components was undertaken considering a scaled standardized drive cycle selected to be utilized for testing. This involves the estimation and selection of the electric motor size, energy storage requirement and associated ratings of power electronics for control. The ADVISOR software package has been utilized to support the calculated sizes of electrical components for this experimental setup

Mapping small molecule binding data to structural domains.

RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are.BACKGROUND: Large-scale bioactivity/SAR Open Data has recently become available, and this has allowed new analyses and approaches to be developed to help address the productivity and translational gaps of current drug discovery. One of the current limitations of these data is the relative sparsity of reported interactions per protein target, and complexities in establishing clear relationships between bioactivity and targets using bioinformatics tools. We detail in this paper the indexing of targets by the structural domains that bind (or are likely to bind) the ligand within a full-length protein. Specifically, we present a simple heuristic to map small molecule binding to Pfam domains. This profiling can be applied to all proteins within a genome to give some indications of the potential pharmacological modulation and regulation of all proteins. RESULTS: In this implementation of our heuristic, ligand binding to protein targets from the ChEMBL database was mapped to structural domains as defined by profiles contained within the Pfam-A database. Our mapping suggests that the majority of assay targets within the current version of the ChEMBL database bind ligands through a small number of highly prevalent domains, and conversely the majority of Pfam domains sampled by our data play no currently established role in ligand binding. Validation studies, carried out firstly against Uniprot entries with expert binding-site annotation and secondly against entries in the wwPDB repository of crystallographic protein structures, demonstrate that our simple heuristic maps ligand binding to the correct domain in about 90 percent of all assessed cases. Using the mappings obtained with our heuristic, we have assembled ligand sets associated with each Pfam domain. CONCLUSIONS: Small molecule binding has been mapped to Pfam-A domains of protein targets in the ChEMBL bioactivity database. The result of this mapping is an enriched annotation of small molecule bioactivity data and a grouping of activity classes following the Pfam-A specifications of protein domains. This is valuable for data-focused approaches in drug discovery, for example when extrapolating potential targets of a small molecule with known activity against one or few targets, or in the assessment of a potential target for drug discovery or screening studies

Resolution of spatial ambiguity by the hippocampal place system

External space is coded in the brain by a network of spatially modulated neurons (including place, grid, border and head direction cells), known as the ‘cognitive map’.This internal map allows flexible and efficient navigation through the external world. These neurons use both self-motion and visual landmark information to update their spatial activity and form an accurate representation of space. Sometimes, the spatial meaning of a landmark can be ambiguous, e.g. when it can be approached from different directions (for example, a tree on the border between two fields). In such cases context information, such as odour, colour or texture, can provide clues to separate one environment from another. Recent work has shown that head direction (HD) cells in the retrosplenial cortex can use these non-metric cues to resolve visually symmetrical spaces with directional landmark ambiguity. In this study, we asked whether animals can also use these nonmetric cues to guide their behaviour, in this case in order to solve spatial tasks across multi-compartment space. Here we show that, behaviourally, rodents can correctly encode relative object positions in visually ambiguous space, and can resolve the directional ambiguity of two visually symmetrical spaces based only on odour information. Electrophysiological recordings of hippocampal place and anterior thalamus HD cells confirmed that both cell types can use odour-context information to discriminate these spaces; therefore, we tested potential involvement of the HD system by temporarily inactivating the anterior thalamus with an awake muscimol infusion. In the behavioural task, HD-disrupted animals show impairment in task performance compared to sham but retain response to novelty. Overall, these results indicate that rodents can use odour-context information to resolve directional ambiguity in otherwise identical multi-compartment environments, and suggest an involvement of the HD system in this process

Gestural Turing Test. A Motion-Capture Experiment for Exploring Believability In Artificial Nonverbal Communication.

One of the open problems in creating believable characters in computer games and collaborative virtual environments is simulating adaptive human-like motion. Classical artificial intelligence (AI) research places an emphasis on verbal language. In response to the limitations of classical AI, many researchers have turned their attention to embodied communication and situated intelligence. Inspired by Gestural Theory, which claims that speech emerged from visual, bodily gestures in primates, we implemented a variation of the Turing Test, using motion instead of text for messaging between agents. In doing this, we attempt to understand the qualities of motion that seem human-like to people. We designed two gestural AI algorithms that simulate or mimic communicative human motion using the positions of the head and the hands to determine three moving points as the signal. To run experiments, we implemented a networked-based architecture for a Vicon motion capture studio. Subjects were shown both artificial and human gestures, and were told to declare whether it was real or fake. Techniques such as simple gesture imitation were found to increase believability. While we require many such experiments to understand the perception of humanness in movement, we believe this research is essential to developing a truly believable character

Behavioural innovation and the evolution of cognition in birds

Cognition shapes the interactions of an animal with its environment. Species vary greatly in all aspects of cognition, and studying the relationship between this variation and ecology is crucial for understanding how intelligence has evolved. In this thesis, I approach questions about the ecology and evolution of cognition that are often ignored because cognition is difficult to quantify. I use innovation rate as an operational measure and residual brain size as a correlate of general cognition in birds. I first examine the link between cognition and ecology through comparative analyses of the relationships between residual brain size, innovativeness, and measures of ecological generalism across a broad sample of the avian phylogeny, and within a single clade (Icteridae). I find that innovation is positively correlated with habitat breadth but not diet generalism, and that neither measure of generalism is associated with residual brain size. Although residual brain size and innovation rate are strongly correlated with one another, they each appear to have different relationships to a species' ecology. Further analysis finds that the relationship between innovativeness and residual brain size is driven by innovations that involve the use of novel foraging techniques and not the ingestion of new food items. Comparative studies use the traits of extant species to infer their evolutionary history, but can only speculate on the forces driving changes in a trait. The latter half of my thesis focuses on these underlying forces and behavioural mechanisms. Using a game theory model, I show that unpredictable food availability might drive both behavioural flexibility and sociality, two traits strongly associated with cognitive complexity. Finally, I focus on innovativeness at the intraspecific level and examine foraging innovation in a large-brained grackle species, Quiscalus lugubris. I find that this gregarious species is slower to innovate when conspecifics are nearby, and that individuals differ in their ability to solve novel problems. I use these differences to describe the process of innovation, and show that novelty responses, attention, persistence, and flexibility are all important factors underlying individual variation in the ability to innovate.La cognition dirige les interactions d'un animal avec son environnement. Les espèces varient énormément dans tous les aspects de la cognition, et étudier les relations entre ces variations, l'écologie et l'évolution est crucial pour comprendre comment l'intelligence a évolué. Dans cette thèse, j'aborde les questions de l'écologie et l'évolution de la cognition souvent ignorées, la cognition étant difficile à évaluer quantitativement. J'ai utilisé le taux d'innovation comme une mesure opérationnelle, et la taille résiduelle du cerveau comme un corrélat de la capacité cognitive générale des oiseaux. J'ai d'abord examiné le lien entre la cognition et l'écologie en procédant à des analyses comparatives des relations entre la taille résiduelle du cerveau, la capacité innovatrice, et des mesures du généralisme écologique à travers un large échantillon de la phylogénie aviaire, et dans un clade unique (Icteridae). J'ai trouvé que la capacité innovatrice est corrélée positivement avec l'étendue de l'habitat, mais non avec le régime généraliste, et qu'aucune mesure du généralisme n'est associée avec la taille résiduelle du cerveau. Bien que la taille résiduelle du cerveau et le taux d'innovation soient fortement corrélés entre eux, chacun d'eux semble avoir des relations différentes avec l'écologie de l'espèce. Une analyse plus poussée a montré que la relation entre la capacité innovatrice et la taille résiduelle du cerveau est déterminée par les innovations impliquant l'utilisation de nouvelles techniques d'approvisionnement, et non l'ingestion de nouveaux types d'aliments. Les études comparatives utilisent les traits d'espèces existantes pour en déduire leur évolution, mais peuvent seulement spéculer sur les forces conduisant les changements d'un trait. La seconde moitié de ma thèse se concentre sur ces forces sous-jacentes et les mécanismes comportementaux. En utilisant un modèle de théorie des jeux, j'ai montré que l'imprévisibilité de la disponibilité alimentaire peut mener tant à la flexibilité comportementale qu'à la socialité, deux traits fortement associés à la complexité cognitive. Enfin, je me suis concentrée sur la capacité innovatrice au niveau interindividuel et j'ai étudié l'innovation lors de l'approvisionnement chez le Quiscale merle, Quiscalus lugubris, une espèce possédant un gros cerveau. J'ai trouvé que cette espèce grégaire est moins rapide à innover lorsque des congénères sont à proximité, et que les individus diffèrent dans leur capacité à résoudre de nouveaux problèmes. J'ai utilisé ces différences pour décrire le processus de l'innovation, et montré que la réponse à la nouveauté, l'attention, la persistance et la flexibilité sont d' importants facteurs sous-jacents de la variation interindividuelle de la capacité à innover