94,609 research outputs found
Can Machines Think in Radio Language?
People can think in auditory, visual and tactile forms of language, so can
machines principally. But is it possible for them to think in radio language?
According to a first principle presented for general intelligence, i.e. the
principle of language's relativity, the answer may give an exceptional solution
for robot astronauts to talk with each other in space exploration.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur
The Synthesis of 4-Ethyl-2-propyl-3-substitutedpyrrolo[ 3,4-b]quinoline-1,9-dione Derivatives from 3,3-Dichloro-4-ethyl-thieno[3,4-b]quinoline-1,9-dione and Propylamine
The preparation, spectral properties and structure elucidations of the hitherto undocumented 3-oxo-, 3-thioxo-, 3-propylimino-, 3-imino-, and 3-propylamino- derivatives of 4-ethyl-2-propyl-2,3-dihydro-pyrrolo[3,4-b]quinoline-1,9-dione are described. Mechanistic aspects relating particularly to the formation of the latter two unprecedented products are considered. Magnetic anisotropic effects (deshielding/line broadening of signals) are exhibited by the α-methylene protons of the 4-ethyl moiety in the 1H NMR spectra of the first four of the above, and in several 3,3-dichloro-thieno[3,4-b]quinoline-1,9-diones and intramolecular H-bonded, 1,2-dialkyl-4-oxo-3-quinolinecarboxylic acid precursor substrates.KEYWORDS: 3-Imino-, 3-propylamino-, 3-propylimino-, 3-oxo-, 3-thioxo-substituted 4-ethyl-2-propyl- 2,3-dihydro-pyrrolo[3,4-b]quinoline- 1,9-diones, 4-methyl-, 4-propyl-substituted-3,3-dichloro-thieno[3,4-b]quinoline-1,9-diones, intramolecular H-bonding, magnetic anisotropic effects
The influence of expertise on brain activation of the action observation network during anticipation of tennis and volleyball serves
In many daily activities, and especially in sport, it is necessary to predict the effects of others' actions in order to initiate appropriate responses. Recently, researchers have suggested that the action-observation network (AON) including the cerebellum plays an essential role during such anticipation, particularly in sport expert performers. In the present study, we examined the influence of task-specific expertise on the AON by investigating differences between two expert groups trained in different sports while anticipating action effects. Altogether, 15 tennis and 16 volleyball experts anticipated the direction of observed tennis and volleyball serves while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The expert group in each sport acted as novice controls in the other sport with which they had only little experience. When contrasting anticipation in both expertise conditions with the corresponding untrained sport, a stronger activation of AON areas (SPL, SMA), and particularly of cerebellar structures, was observed. Furthermore, the neural activation within the cerebellum and the SPL was linearly correlated with participant's anticipation performance, irrespective of the specific expertise. For the SPL, this relationship also holds when an expert performs a domain-specific anticipation task. Notably, the stronger activation of the cerebellum as well as of the SMA and the SPL in the expertise conditions suggests that experts rely on their more fine-tuned perceptual-motor representations that have improved during years of training when anticipating the effects of others' actions in their preferred sport. The association of activation within the SPL and the cerebellum with the task achievement suggests that these areas are the predominant brain sites involved in fast motor predictions. The SPL reflects the processing of domain-specific contextual information and the cerebellum the usage of a predictive internal model to solve the anticipation task. © 2014 Balser, Lorey, Pilgramm, Naumann, Kindermann, Stark, Zentgraf, Williams and Munzert
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Assessment of the tissue distribution of transplanted human endothelial progenitor cells by radioactive labeling
Background— Transplantation of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) improves vascularization and left ventricular function after experimental myocardial ischemia. However, tissue distribution of transplanted EPCs has not yet been monitored in living animals. Therefore, we tested whether radioactive labeling allows us to detect injected EPCs
Adaptive Lévy processes and area-restricted search in human foraging
A considerable amount of research has claimed that animals’ foraging behaviors display movement lengths with power-law distributed tails, characteristic of Lévy flights and Lévy walks. Though these claims have recently come into question, the proposal that many animals forage using Lévy processes nonetheless remains. A Lévy process does not consider when or where resources are encountered, and samples movement lengths independently of past experience. However, Lévy processes too have come into question based on the observation that in patchy resource environments resource-sensitive foraging strategies, like area-restricted search, perform better than Lévy flights yet can still generate heavy-tailed distributions of movement lengths. To investigate these questions further, we tracked humans as they searched for hidden resources in an open-field virtual environment, with either patchy or dispersed resource distributions. Supporting previous research, for both conditions logarithmic binning methods were consistent with Lévy flights and rank-frequency methods–comparing alternative distributions using maximum likelihood methods–showed the strongest support for bounded power-law distributions (truncated Lévy flights). However, goodness-of-fit tests found that even bounded power-law distributions only accurately characterized movement behavior for 4 (out of 32) participants. Moreover, paths in the patchy environment (but not the dispersed environment) showed a transition to intensive search following resource encounters, characteristic of area-restricted search. Transferring paths between environments revealed that paths generated in the patchy environment were adapted to that environment. Our results suggest that though power-law distributions do not accurately reflect human search, Lévy processes may still describe movement in dispersed environments, but not in patchy environments–where search was area-restricted. Furthermore, our results indicate that search strategies cannot be inferred without knowing how organisms respond to resources–as both patched and dispersed conditions led to similar Lévy-like movement distributions
Quality of life and visual function in Nigeria: findings from the National Survey of Blindness and Visual Impairment
Aims To assess associations of visual function (VF) and quality of life (QOL) by visual acuity (VA), causes of blindness and types of cataract procedures in Nigeria. Methods Multi-stage stratified cluster random sampling was used to identify a nationally representative sample of persons aged >= 40 years. VF/QOL questionnaires were administered to participants with VA = 6/12. Results VF/QOL questionnaires were administered to 2076 participants. Spearman's rank correlation showed a strong correlation between decreasing VA and VF/QOL scores (p< 0.0001) with greatest impact on social (p< 0.0001) and mobility-related activities (p< 0.0001). People who were blind due to glaucoma had lower VF and QOL scores than those who were blind due to cataract. Mean VF and QOL scores were lower after couching compared with conventional cataract surgery (mean VF score=51.0 vs 63.0 and mean QOL score=71.3 vs 79.3). Finally, VF and QOL scores were lower among populations with specific characteristics. Conclusions Populations with the following characteristics should be targeted to improve VF and QOL: people who are blind, older people, women, manual labourers, people living in rural areas, those living in the northern geopolitical zones, those practising Islamic and Traditionalism faith, those not currently married and those who have undergone couching
Identifying host molecular features strongly linked with responses to huanglongbing disease in citrus leaves
To dash or to dawdle: verb-associated speed of motion influences eye movements during spoken sentence comprehension
In describing motion events verbs of manner provide information about the speed of agents or objects in those events. We used eye tracking to investigate how inferences about this verb-associated speed of motion would influence the time course of attention to a visual scene that matched an event described in language. Eye movements were recorded as participants heard spoken sentences with verbs that implied a fast (“dash”) or slow (“dawdle”) movement of an agent towards a goal. These sentences were heard whilst participants concurrently looked at scenes depicting the agent and a path which led to the goal object. Our results indicate a mapping of events onto the visual scene consistent with participants mentally simulating the movement of the agent along the path towards the goal: when the verb implies a slow manner of motion, participants look more often and longer along the path to the goal; when the verb implies a fast manner of motion, participants tend to look earlier at the goal and less on the path. These results reveal that event comprehension in the presence of a visual world involves establishing and dynamically updating the locations of entities in response to linguistic descriptions of events
Context Mining of Sedentary Behavior for Promoting Self-Awareness Using Smartphone
Sedentary behaviour is increasing due to societal changes and is related to prolonged periods of sitting. There is sufficient evidence proving that sedentary behaviour has a negative impact on people’s health and wellness. This paper presents our research findings on how to mine the temporal contexts of sedentary behaviour by utilizing the on-board sensors of a smartphone. We use the accelerometer sensor of the smartphone to recognize user situations (i.e., still or active). If our model confirms that the user context is still, then there is a high probability of being sedentary. Then, we process the environmental sound to recognize the micro-context, such as working on a computer or watching television during leisure time. Our goal is to reduce sedentary behaviour by suggesting preventive interventions to take short breaks during prolonged sitting to be more active. We achieve this goal by providing the visualization to the user, who wants to monitor his/her sedentary behaviour to reduce unhealthy routines for self-management purposes. The main contribution of this paper is two-fold: (i) an initial implementation of the proposed framework supporting real-time context identification; (ii) testing and evaluation of the framework, which suggest that our application is capable of substantially reducing sedentary behaviour and assisting users to be active
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