268 research outputs found
Global dimensions for the recognition of prototypical urban roads in large-scale vector topographic maps
CISRG discussion paper ; 1
The whirling wheel: the male construction of empowered female identities in Old Norse myth and legend
This thesis examines the body of medieval literature associated with Old Norse myth and legend. Though this is a diffuse corpus produced over a long span of time and from a wide geographical area, it is possible to establish connections between texts and to highlight certain recurring narrative patterns that are deeply entrenched in this literary tradition. The specific focus of the present study is to analyse the narrative patterns that characterise the interactions between male and female figures.
It has long been understood that female figures tend to occupy carefully defined social roles in this body of literature, and much work has been done in assessing these. This thesis takes the unique approach of investigating whether these roles can be viewed, not as a product of the mentality of the writers of this literary material, but rather as a product of male characters within the literary narratives themselves. The investigation poses the question of whether men can be seen, through their words, thoughts, and actions, to be responsible for creating female identities. Intimately connected to the concept of identity creation is the idea of power: this thesis will argue that most male attempts to redefine female identity is motivated by a desire to acquire, control, negate, or otherwise alter, the powers possessed by females. Quite often, because fallible males demonstrate an imperfect understanding of female power, there can be a marked disparity between the abilities certain women are thought to possess, and those they actually do. The thesis will examine a large selection of supernatural female figures, across a broad range of literature, ultimately to suggest that the male creation of female power is deeply entrenched in narrative patterns observable in many different contexts
Multi-Modal Geometric Learning for Grasping and Manipulation
This work provides an architecture that incorporates depth and tactile
information to create rich and accurate 3D models useful for robotic
manipulation tasks. This is accomplished through the use of a 3D convolutional
neural network (CNN). Offline, the network is provided with both depth and
tactile information and trained to predict the object's geometry, thus filling
in regions of occlusion. At runtime, the network is provided a partial view of
an object. Tactile information is acquired to augment the captured depth
information. The network can then reason about the object's geometry by
utilizing both the collected tactile and depth information. We demonstrate that
even small amounts of additional tactile information can be incredibly helpful
in reasoning about object geometry. This is particularly true when information
from depth alone fails to produce an accurate geometric prediction. Our method
is benchmarked against and outperforms other visual-tactile approaches to
general geometric reasoning. We also provide experimental results comparing
grasping success with our method
Human Robot Interface for Assistive Grasping
This work describes a new human-in-the-loop (HitL) assistive grasping system
for individuals with varying levels of physical capabilities. We investigated
the feasibility of using four potential input devices with our assistive
grasping system interface, using able-bodied individuals to define a set of
quantitative metrics that could be used to assess an assistive grasping system.
We then took these measurements and created a generalized benchmark for
evaluating the effectiveness of any arbitrary input device into a HitL grasping
system. The four input devices were a mouse, a speech recognition device, an
assistive switch, and a novel sEMG device developed by our group that was
connected either to the forearm or behind the ear of the subject. These
preliminary results provide insight into how different interface devices
perform for generalized assistive grasping tasks and also highlight the
potential of sEMG based control for severely disabled individuals.Comment: 8 pages, 21 figure
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Serotonergic psychedelics LSD & psilocybin increase the fractal dimension of cortical brain activity in spatial and temporal domains.
Psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin and LSD, represent unique tools for researchers investigating the neural origins of consciousness. Currently, the most compelling theories of how psychedelics exert their effects is by increasing the complexity of brain activity and moving the system towards a critical point between order and disorder, creating more dynamic and complex patterns of neural activity. While the concept of criticality is of central importance to this theory, few of the published studies on psychedelics investigate it directly, testing instead related measures such as algorithmic complexity or Shannon entropy. We propose using the fractal dimension of functional activity in the brain as a measure of complexity since findings from physics suggest that as a system organizes towards criticality, it tends to take on a fractal structure. We tested two different measures of fractal dimension, one spatial and one temporal, using fMRI data from volunteers under the influence of both LSD and psilocybin. The first was the fractal dimension of cortical functional connectivity networks and the second was the fractal dimension of BOLD time-series. In addition to the fractal measures, we used a well-established, non-fractal measure of signal complexity and show that they behave similarly. We were able to show that both psychedelic drugs significantly increased the fractal dimension of functional connectivity networks, and that LSD significantly increased the fractal dimension of BOLD signals, with psilocybin showing a non-significant trend in the same direction. With both LSD and psilocybin, we were able to localize changes in the fractal dimension of BOLD signals to brain areas assigned to the dorsal-attenion network. These results show that psychedelic drugs increase the fractal dimension of activity in the brain and we see this as an indicator that the changes in consciousness triggered by psychedelics are associated with evolution towards a critical zone.NIHR
Wellcome
NSF-NRT
MRC
Beckley Foundation
Alex Mosley Charitable Trust
Ad Astria Chandaria Foundation.
Neuro-psychoanalysis Foundation
Multidisplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies
The Heffter Research Institut
The relationship between VO2 max and 1200m shuttle run performance in elite academy football players
Purpose: To investigate the relationship between VO2
max
and performance in the 1200m shuttle run test in elite
Premier League academy football players.
Methods: Seventeen male professional outfield football
players completed a laboratory based incremental treadmill
test to establish vVO2
max and a field based 1200m shuttle
test to estimate velocity at MAS. During the pre-season
period a linear speed phase consisting of twice weekly PS
exposures were conducted and each player’s PS reached
during this period was established. Body composition was
measured using DEXA.
Results: Examining the standardized (scaled) coefficients,
ASR (7.373) had the largest effect on VO2
max followed by
PS (-5.568), MAS (3.604), Body Fat (-0.285) and Lean Mass
(-0.185).The results suggest that the model is a significantly
better predictor than a model that constantly predicts the
mean VO2max value (F = 3.422, p = 0.041).
Conclusions: The MAS values obtained from the
1200m shuttle test may be an appropriate assessment to
consider when monitoring and individualizing high-intensity
performance rather than the generic threshold of 5.5 m/s.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
Quantum computing with defects
Abstract, The successful development of quantum computers is dependent on identifying quantum systems to function as qubits. Paramagnetic states of point defects in semiconductors or insulators have been shown to provide an effective implementation, with the nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond being a prominent example. The spin-1 ground state of this center can be initialized, manipulated, and read out at room temperature. Identifying defects with similar properties in other materials would add flexibility in device design and possibly lead to superior performance or greater functionality. A systematic search for defect-based qubits has been initiated, starting from a list of physical criteria that such centers and their hosts should satisfy. First-principles calculations of atomic and electronic structure are essential in supporting this quest: They provide a deeper understanding of defects that are already being exploited and allow efficient exploration of new materials systems and "defects by design.
The use of automated quantitative analysis to evaluate epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition associated proteins in clear cell renal cell carcinoma.
BACKGROUND: Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) has recently been implicated in the initiation and progression of renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Some mRNA gene expression studies have suggested a link between the EMT phenotype and poorer clinical outcome from RCC. This study evaluated expression of EMT-associated proteins in RCC using in situ automated quantitative analysis immunofluorescence (AQUA) and compared expression levels with clinical outcome. METHODS/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Unsupervised hierarchical cluster analysis of pre-existing RCC gene expression array data (GSE16449) from 36 patients revealed the presence of an EMT transcriptional signature in RCC [E-cadherin high/SLUG low/SNAIL low]. As automated immunofluorescence technology is dependent on accurate definition of the tumour cells in which measurements take place is critical, extensive optimisation was carried out resulting in a novel pan-cadherin based tumour mask that distinguishes renal cancer cells from stromal components. 61 patients with ccRCC and clinical follow-up were subsequently assessed for expression of EMT-associated proteins (WT1, SNAIL, SLUG, E-cadherin and phospho-β-catenin) on tissue microarrays. Using Kaplan-Meier analysis both SLUG (p = 0.029) and SNAIL (p = 0.024) (log rank Mantel-Cox) were significantly associated with prolonged progression free survival (PFS). Using Cox regression univariate and multivariate analysis none of the biomarkers were significantly correlated with outcome. 14 of the 61 patients expressed the gene expression analysis predicted EMT-protein signature [E-cadherin high/SLUG low/SNAIL low], which was not found to be associated to PFS when measured at the protein level. A combination of high expression of SNAIL and low stage was able to stratify patients with greater significance (p = 0.001) then either variable alone (high SNAIL p = 0.024, low stage p = 0.029). CONCLUSIONS: AQUA has been shown to have the potential to identify EMT related protein targets in RCC allowing for stratification of patients into high and low risk groups, as well the ability to assess the association of reputed EMT signatures to progression of the disease
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