OBSERVING OR PERFORMING ACTIONS? UNDERSTANDING CIRCULAR MOTION VIA TWO TYPES OF LEARNING ACTIVITIES

Decades of research support the benefits of movement for cognitive development however this link remains unexploited in educational practice. For this reason, embodied cognition serves as the theoretical underpinnings of this study proposing that thoughts and actions are influenced by sensory experience. Fifty-eight 6th-grade students were divided into two groups: The first group participated in activities designed for full-body movement and the second observed the haptic manipulation of materials by an educator. The study thus utilized a two-group design and was conducted in phases: pretest, intervention, immediate posttest and delayed posttest. The entire process was recorded to assess students’ understanding and the multimodal text thereby created included both spoken word and bodily expressions such as posture and gestures, enabling us to closely follow the progress of every participant. The range of responses was then narrowed down to adequate and inadequate, followed by statistical processing of the data. The results showed that both execution and observation effectively contributed to the improved performance of students immediately after the interventions. Nevertheless, students who participated in bodily-based activities showed an additional advantage four months later. While this study focused solely on circular motion, the idea to investigate physical engagement and its impact on students’ understanding could be extended to other content, and the long-term effectiveness of bodily-based learning ought to encourage a redesign of the official curriculum.  Article visualizations

Rotated Spectral Principal Component Analysis (rsPCA) for Identifying Dynamical Modes of Variability in Climate Systems.

Spectral PCA (sPCA), in contrast to classical PCA, offers the advantage of identifying organized spatiotemporal patterns within specific frequency bands and extracting dynamical modes. However, the unavoidable trade-off between frequency resolution and robustness of the PCs leads to high sensitivity to noise and overfitting, which limits the interpretation of the sPCA results. We propose herein a simple nonparametric implementation of sPCA using the continuous analytic Morlet wavelet as a robust estimator of the cross-spectral matrices with good frequency resolution. To improve the interpretability of the results, especially when several modes of similar amplitude exist within the same frequency band, we propose a rotation of the complex-valued eigenvectors to optimize their spatial regularity (smoothness). The developed method, called rotated spectral PCA (rsPCA), is tested on synthetic data simulating propagating waves and shows impressive performance even with high levels of noise in the data. Applied to global historical geopotential height (GPH) and sea surface temperature (SST) daily time series, the method accurately captures patterns of atmospheric Rossby waves at high frequencies (3-60-day periods) in both GPH and SST and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) at low frequencies (2-7-yr periodicity) in SST. At high frequencies the rsPCA successfully unmixes the identified waves, revealing spatially coherent patterns with robust propagation dynamics

Should Robots Blush?

Social interaction is the most complex challenge in daily life. Inevitably, social robots will encounter interactions that are outside their competence. This raises a basic design question: how can robots fail gracefully in social interaction? The characteristic human response to social failure is embarrassment. Usefully, embarrassment signals both recognition of a problem and typically enlists sympathy and assistance to resolve it. This could enhance robot acceptability and provides an opportunity for interactive learning. Using a speculative design approach we explore how, when and why robots might communicate embarrassment. A series of specially developed cultural probes, scenario development and low-fidelity prototyping exercises suggest that: embarrassment is relevant for managing a diverse range of social scenarios, impacts on both humanoid and non-humanoid robot design, and highlights the critical importance of understanding interactional context. We conclude that embarrassment is fundamental to competent social functioning and provides a potentially fertile area for interaction design

Cardiorespiratory Fitness, Metabolic Risk, and Inflammation in Children

The aim of this study was to investigate the independent associations among cardiorespiratory fitness, metabolic syndrome (MetS), and C-reactive protein (CRP) in children. The sample consisted of 112 children (11.4  ±  0.4 years). Data was obtained for children's anthropometry, cardiorespiratory fitness, MetS components, and CRP levels. MetS was defined using criteria analogous to the Adult Treatment Panel III definition. A MetS risk score was also computed. Prevalence of the MetS was 5.4%, without gender differences. Subjects with low fitness showed significantly higher MetS risk (P < 0.001) and CRP (P < 0.007), compared to the high-fitness pupils. However, differences in MetS risk, and CRP between fitness groups decreased when adjusted for waist circumference. These data indicate that the mechanisms linking cardiorespiratory fitness, MetS risk and inflammation in children are extensively affected by obesity. Intervention strategies aiming at reducing obesity and improving cardiorespiratory fitness in childhood might contribute to the prevention of the MetS in adulthood

Adaptive control with neural networks-based disturbance observer for a spherical UAV

This paper develops a control scheme for a Spherical Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) which can be used in complex scenarios where traditional navigation and communications systems would not succeed. The proposed scheme is based on the nonlinear control theory combined with Adaptive Neural-Networks Disturbance Observer (NN-DOB) and controls the attitude and altitude of the UAV in presence of model uncertainties and external disturbances. The NN-DOB can effectively estimate the uncertainties without the knowledge of their bounds and the control system stability is proven using Lyapunov’s stability theorems. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the validity of the proposed method on the UAV under model uncertainties and external disturbances

Spectroscopic Characterization of Gapped Graphene in the Presence of Circularly Polarized Light

We present a description of the energy loss of a charged particle moving parallel to a graphene layer and graphene double layers. Specifically, we compare the stopping power of the plasma oscillations for these two configurations in the absence as well as the presence of circularly polarized light whose frequency and intensity can be varied to yield an energy gap of several hundred $\texttt{meV}$ between the valence and conduction bands. The dressed states of the Dirac electrons by the photons yield collective plasma excitations whose characteristics are qualitatively and quantitatively different from those produced by Dirac fermions in gapless graphene, due in part to the finite effective mass of the dressed electrons. For example, the range of wave numbers for undamped self-sustaining plasmons is increased as the gap is increased, thereby increasing the stopping power of graphene for some range of charged particle velocity when graphene is radiated by circularly polarized light

Relating Electric Vehicle Charging to Speed Scaling with Job-Specific Speed Limits

Due to the ongoing electrification of transport in combination with limited power grid capacities, efficient ways to schedule the charging of electric vehicles (EVs) are needed for the operation of, for example, large parking lots. Common approaches such as model predictive control repeatedly solve a corresponding offline problem. In this work, we first present and analyze the Flow-based Offline Charging Scheduler (FOCS), an offline algorithm to derive an optimal EV charging schedule for a fleet of EVs that minimizes an increasing, convex and differentiable function of the corresponding aggregated power profile. To this end, we relate EV charging to processor speed scaling models with job-specific speed limits. We prove our algorithm to be optimal and derive necessary and sufficient conditions for any EV charging profile to be optimal. Furthermore, we discuss two online algorithms and their competitive ratios for a specific class objective functions. In particular, we show that if those algorithms are applied and adapted to the presented EV scheduling problem, the competitive ratios for Average Rate and Optimal Available match those of the classical speed scaling problem. Finally, we present numerical results using real-world EV charging data to put the theoretical competitive ratios into a practical perspective

Expression of TIM3/VISTA checkpoints and the CD68 macrophage-associated marker correlates with anti-PD1/PDL1 resistance: implications of immunogram heterogeneity.

Although immunotherapies have achieved remarkable salutary effects among subgroups of advanced cancers, most patients do not respond. We comprehensively evaluated biomarkers associated with the "cancer-immunity cycle" in the pan-cancer setting in order to understand the immune landscape of metastatic malignancies as well as anti-PD-1/PD-L1 inhibitor resistance mechanisms. Interrogation of 51 markers of the cancer-immunity cycle was performed in 101 patients with diverse malignancies using a clinical-grade RNA sequencing assay. Overall, the immune phenotypes demonstrated overexpression of multiple checkpoints including VISTA (15.8% of 101 patients), PD-L2 (10.9%), TIM3 (9.9%), LAG3 (8.9%), PD-L1 (6.9%) and CTLA4 (3.0%). Additionally, aberrant expression of macrophage-associated markers (e.g. CD68 and CSF1R; 11-23%), metabolic immune escape markers (e.g. ADORA2A and IDO1; 9-16%) and T-cell priming markers (e.g. CD40, GITR, ICOS and OX40; 4-31%) were observed. Most tumors (87.1%, 88/101) expressed distinct immune portfolios, with a median of six theoretically actionable biomarkers (pharmacologically tractable by Food and Drug Administration approved agents [on- or off-label] or with agents in clinical development). Overexpression of TIM-3, VISTA and CD68 were significantly associated with shorter progression-free survival (PFS) after anti-PD-1/PD-L1-based therapies (among 39 treated patients) (all P &lt;&nbsp;.01). In conclusion, cancer-immunity cycle biomarker evaluation was feasible in diverse solid tumors. High expression of alternative checkpoints TIM-3 and VISTA and of the macrophage-associated markers CD68 were associated with significantly worse PFS after anti-PD-1/PD-L1-based therapies. Most patients had distinct and complex immune expression profiles suggesting the need for customized combinations of immunotherapy