Trajectory control of robot manipulators with closed-kinematic chain mechanism

The problem of Cartesian trajectory control of a closed-kinematic chain mechanism robot manipulator, recently built at CAIR to study the assembly of NASA hardware for the future Space Station, is considered. The study is performed by both computer simulation and experimentation for tracking of three different paths: a straight line, a sinusoid, and a circle. Linearization and pole placement methods are employed to design controller gains. Results show that the controllers are robust and there are good agreements between simulation and experimentation. The results also show excellent tracking quality and small overshoots

Differential signaling mechanisms regulate expression of CC chemokine receptor-2 during monocyte maturation

BACKGROUND: Peripheral blood monocytes and monocyte-derived macrophages are key regulatory components in many chronic inflammatory pathologies of the vasculature including the formation of atherosclerotic lesions. However, the molecular and biochemical events underlying monocyte maturation are not fully understood. METHODS: We have used freshly isolated human monocytes and the model human monocyte cell line, THP-1, to investigate changes in the expression of a panel of monocyte and macrophage markers during monocyte differentiation. We have examined these changes by RT-PCR and FACS analysis. Furthermore, we cloned the CCR2 promoter and analyzed specific changes in transcriptional activation of CCR2 during monocyte maturation. RESULTS: The CC chemokine receptor 2 (CCR2) is rapidly downregulated as monocytes move down the macrophage differentiation pathway while other related chemokine receptors are not. Using a variety of biochemical and transcriptional analyses in the human THP-1 monocyte model system, we show that both monocytes and THP-1 cells express high levels of CCR2, whereas THP-1 derived macrophages fail to express detectable CCR2 mRNA or protein. We further demonstrate that multiple signaling pathways activated by IFN-γ and M-CSF, or by protein kinase C and cytoplasmic calcium can mediate the downregulation of CCR2 but not CCR1. CONCLUSION: During monocyte-to-macrophage differentiation CCR2, but not CCR1, is downregulated and this regulation occurs at the level of transcription through upstream 5' regulatory elements

Design and implementation of a compliant robot with force feedback and strategy planning software

Force-feedback robotics techniques are being developed for automated precision assembly and servicing of NASA space flight equipment. Design and implementation of a prototype robot which provides compliance and monitors forces is in progress. Computer software to specify assembly steps and makes force feedback adjustments during assembly are coded and tested for three generically different precision mating problems. A model program demonstrates that a suitably autonomous robot can plan its own strategy

Hope and the Holy Spirit: The Global Pentecostal Movement in Brazil and Nigeria, 1910-2010

This dissertation argues that Pentecostal Christianity is a fundamentally global religion. By examining Pentecostalism in Brazil and Nigeria - two of the most Pentecostal countries in the world - it de-centers the United States and shows how Pentecostalism's development in the U.S. and elsewhere has been contemporaneous. By demonstrating the multiplicity of narratives which comprise Pentecostal history, this dissertation intervenes not only into the field of religious history but also into global studies, arguing that global movements are best understood by investigating the specific, historically-produced networks that constitute them. What is most fruitful in looking at expressions of a global movement is not considering which aspects came from within and which from without, but rather investigating the modes, degrees, and directions of interaction. The first two chapters revise the conventional narratives of Pentecostalism's beginnings in Brazil and Nigeria, using missionary records, colonial correspondence, and other historical evidence to show how it originally emerged as a complicated mix of imported and homegrown elements. The third chapter examines the middle years of Pentecostalism's development in both countries, looking at Brazilian conversion narratives and Nigerian maternity centers in order to examine what people hoped Pentecostalism would do for them personally. Chapters Four and Five explore the national political context of Pentecostalism's development in Nigeria and Brazil over the course of the twentieth century. The final chapter investigates the contemporary intersection of Pentecostal, national, and global identities. Ultimately, by looking at Brazilian Pentecostalism, Nigerian Pentecostalism, and Pentecostalism as a global movement within Brazil and Nigeria, this dissertation offers a model of how one can do global history in a way that both includes and looks beyond the nation-state.Doctor of Philosoph

"The Holy Rollers are invading our territory": Southern Baptist Missionaries and the Early Years of Pentecostalism in Brazil, 1910-1935

This paper uses Southern Baptist missionary records to examine the first twentyfive years of Pentecostalism in Brazil. Considering not only at what the first Pentecostal missionaries did but also what they did not do, it argues that the extraordinary success of the Brazilian Pentecostal movement is due in large part to the following reasons: early Pentecostals had neither the funds nor the theological need to focus on education, their personal class affiliations did not incline them to privilege efforts to evangelize the upper classes, there was no strong female Pentecostal missionary presence, and the Pentecostals had been preceded by mainline Protestant missionaries like the Baptists. Without schools to run and reports to write, Pentecostals were free to do the kind of one-on-one evangelizing that the Baptists had hoped to do but found they had little time for, intentionally stealing many of the Baptists’ flock in the process

Emotional engagements predict and enhance social cognition in young chimpanzees

Social cognition in infancy is evident in coordinated triadic engagements, that is, infants attending jointly with social partners and objects. Current evolutionary theories of primate social cognition tend to highlight species differences in cognition based on human-unique cooperative motives. We consider a developmental model in which engagement experiences produce differential outcomes. We conducted a 10-year-long study in which two groups of laboratory-raised chimpanzee infants were given quantifiably different engagement experiences. Joint attention, cooperativeness, affect, and different levels of cognition were measured in 5- to 12-month-old chimpanzees, and compared to outcomes derived from a normative human database. We found that joint attention skills significantly improved across development for all infants, but by 12 months, the humans significantly surpassed the chimpanzees. We found that cooperativeness was stable in the humans, but by 12 months, the chimpanzee group given enriched engagement experiences significantly surpassed the humans. Past engagement experiences and concurrent affect were significant unique predictors of both joint attention and cooperativeness in 5- to 12-month-old chimpanzees. When engagement experiences and concurrent affect were statistically controlled, joint attention and cooperation were not associated. We explain differential social cognition outcomes in terms of the significant influences of previous engagement experiences and affect, in addition to cognition. Our study highlights developmental processes that underpin the emergence of social cognition in support of evolutionary continuity

Processing of false belief passages during natural story comprehension: An fMRI study

The neural correlates of theory of mind (ToM) are typically studied using paradigms which require participants to draw explicit, task-related inferences (e.g., in the false belief task). In a natural setup, such as listening to stories, false belief mentalizing occurs incidentally as part of narrative processing. In our experiment, participants listened to auditorily presented stories with false belief passages (implicit false belief processing) and immediately after each story answered comprehension questions (explicit false belief processing), while neural responses were measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). All stories included (among other situations) one false belief condition and one closely matched control condition. For the implicit ToM processing, we modeled the hemodynamic response during the false belief passages in the story and compared it to the hemodynamic response during the closely matched control passages. For implicit mentalizing, we found activation in typical ToM processing regions, that is the angular gyrus (AG), superior medial frontal gyrus (SmFG), precuneus (PCUN), middle temporal gyrus (MTG) as well as in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) billaterally. For explicit ToM, we only found AG activation. The conjunction analysis highlighted the left AG and MTG as well as the bilateral IFG as overlapping ToM processing regions for both implicit and explicit modes. Implicit ToM processing during listening to false belief passages, recruits the left SmFG and billateral PCUN in addition to the “mentalizing network” known form explicit processing tasks

Vocabulary Learning in a Yorkshire Terrier: Slow Mapping of Spoken Words

Rapid vocabulary learning in children has been attributed to “fast mapping”, with new words often claimed to be learned through a single presentation. As reported in 2004 in Science a border collie (Rico) not only learned to identify more than 200 words, but fast mapped the new words, remembering meanings after just one presentation. Our research tests the fast mapping interpretation of the Science paper based on Rico's results, while extending the demonstration of large vocabulary recognition to a lap dog. We tested a Yorkshire terrier (Bailey) with the same procedures as Rico, illustrating that Bailey accurately retrieved randomly selected toys from a set of 117 on voice command of the owner. Second we tested her retrieval based on two additional voices, one male, one female, with different accents that had never been involved in her training, again showing she was capable of recognition by voice command. Third, we did both exclusion-based training of new items (toys she had never seen before with names she had never heard before) embedded in a set of known items, with subsequent retention tests designed as in the Rico experiment. After Bailey succeeded on exclusion and retention tests, a crucial evaluation of true mapping tested items previously successfully retrieved in exclusion and retention, but now pitted against each other in a two-choice task. Bailey failed on the true mapping task repeatedly, illustrating that the claim of fast mapping in Rico had not been proven, because no true mapping task had ever been conducted with him. It appears that the task called retention in the Rico study only demonstrated success in retrieval by a process of extended exclusion

A nongenomic mechanism for progesterone-mediated immunosuppression: Inhibition of K+ channels, Ca2+ signaling, and gene expression in T lymphocytes

The mechanism by which progesterone causes localized suppression of the immune response during pregnancy has remained elusive. Using human T lymphocytes and T cell lines, we show that progesterone, at concentrations found in the placenta, rapidly and reversibly blocks voltage-gated and calcium-activated K+ channels (KV and KCa, respectively), resulting in depolarization of the membrane potential. As a result, Ca2+ signaling and nuclear factor of activated T cells (NF-AT)-driven gene expression are inhibited. Progesterone acts distally to the initial steps of T cell receptor (TCR)-mediated signal transduction, since it blocks sustained Ca2+ signals after thapsigargin stimulation, as well as oscillatory Ca2+ signals, but not the Ca2+ transient after TCR stimulation. K+ channel blockade by progesterone is specific; other steroid hormones had little or no effect, although the progesterone antagonist RU 486 also blocked KV and KCa channels. Progesterone effectively blocked a broad spectrum of K+ channels, reducing both Kv1.3 and charybdotoxin-resistant components of KV current and KCa current in T cells, as well as blocking several cloned KV channels expressed in cell lines. Progesterone had little or no effect on a cloned voltage-gated Na+ channel, an inward rectifier K+ channel, or on lymphocyte Ca2+ and Cl- channels. We propose that direct inhibition of K+ channels in T cells by progesterone contributes to progesterone-induced immunosuppression

Emotional Complexity and the Neural Representation of Emotion in Motion

According to theories of emotional complexity, individuals low in emotional complexity encode and represent emotions in visceral or action-oriented terms, whereas individuals high in emotional complexity encode and represent emotions in a differentiated way, using multiple emotion concepts. During functional magnetic resonance imaging, participants viewed valenced animated scenarios of simple ball-like figures attending either to social or spatial aspects of the interactions. Participant’s emotional complexity was assessed using the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale. We found a distributed set of brain regions previously implicated in processing emotion from facial, vocal and bodily cues, in processing social intentions, and in emotional response, were sensitive to emotion conveyed by motion alone. Attention to social meaning amplified the influence of emotion in a subset of these regions. Critically, increased emotional complexity correlated with enhanced processing in a left temporal polar region implicated in detailed semantic knowledge; with a diminished effect of social attention; and with increased differentiation of brain activity between films of differing valence. Decreased emotional complexity was associated with increased activity in regions of pre-motor cortex. Thus, neural coding of emotion in semantic vs action systems varies as a function of emotional complexity, helping reconcile puzzling inconsistencies in neuropsychological investigations of emotion recognition