Which Emotional Behaviors are Actions?

There is a wide range of things we do out of emotion. For example, we smile with pleasure, our voices drop when we are sad, we recoil in shock or jump for joy, we apologize to others out of remorse. It is uncontroversial that some of these behaviors are actions. Clearly, apologizing is an action if anything is. Things seem less clear in the case of other emotional behaviors. Intuitively, the drop in a sad person’s voice is something that happens to her, rather than something she actively performs. Perhaps more interestingly, even jumping for joy can seem a problematic case: although its execution involves the active performance of certain movements, it has been argued to contrast, e.g., with an act of apology, in that it is not performed in order to achieve some end, such as repairing a relationship. This can make this behavior seem considerably different from paradigm actions. Our central concern in this paper is with which emotional behaviors should be classed as actions and why..

Comparison of three radio-frequency discharge modes on the treatment of breast cancer cells in vitro

Non-thermal plasmas (NTPs) are known for their ability to induce thermal-free cytotoxic effects on cancer cells. However, as the variety of NTP devices increases, comparison of their cytotoxic effect becomes increasingly essential. In this work, we compare the cytotoxicity of three different radio-frequency NTPs. MDA-MB-231 triple negative breast cancer cells are treated in suspension in DMEM culture medium by the effluents of a single radiofrequency (RF) discharge device operating in three modes, namely the and modes of the capacitively coupled radio-frequency (CCRF) discharge and a RF plasma jet mode. All three discharge modes reduce the proliferative capacity of MDA-MB-231 cells, but the treatment time required to reach the same efficacy is more than ten times longer using the and the modes than using the jet mode. In all cases, using the appropriate treatment time, cells exhibit an impaired proliferation and eventually start to show signs of cell death (about 48 h after treatment). The three discharge modes also induce nuclear DNA damages. Plasma-produced H2O2 was not found to contribute to the cytotoxicity of the treatment. Furthermore, short-lived reactive species (gas phase or liquid phase species with a lifetime below 1 s) are expected to play a dominant role over the long-lived reactive species in the anti-cancer effect of all three discharge modes

Variation of wood properties within a dominant and suppressed tree of tamarack (Larix laricina (Du Roi) K. Koch)

Radial and axial variations of tracheid length, specific gravity, ring width, and latewood percentage were studied from the stems of a dominant and a suppressed tamarack tree. The trees were 81 and 83 years old respectively, grown in a natural stand near Thunder Bay, Ontario. Specimens were taken from every other ring from the pith to bark along the south and north aspect, at heights 0.15, 1.5, 4.5, 7.5, 10.5, 13.5, and 16.5 m in the tree stems. Juvenile wood and mature wood in the stem were distinguished by using the variation pattern of tracheid length as the criterion. In the mature wood of the dominant and suppressed trees, the average tracheid lengths were 3.16 mm and 2.96 mm, specific gravities 0.48 and 0.45, ring widths 1.09 mm and 0.85 mm, and latewood percentages 36.7% and 35.1% respectively. In the juvenile wood of the two trees, the average tracheid lengths were 2.11 and 2.10 mm, specific gravities 0.48 and 0.44, ring widths 2.36 mm and 1.97 mm, and latewood percentages 29.7% and 33.1% respectively. At all heights sampled, tracheid length increased radially from the pith outward, and leveled off at a certain ring age towards the bark. The rate of increase in tracheid length with ring age increased with height. The ring age at which tracheid length started to level off was used as the boundary of the juvenile and mature wood. The ring age of the boundary decreased with increasing height. Average tracheid length of the juvenile and mature wood increased axially from the base upward, reaching a maximum at the 4.5 m height, then decreasing to the top. Specific gravity and latewood percentage increased radially from the pith outward in the juvenile wood for most of the heights, while they fluctuated in the mature wood. Specific gravity and latewood percentage varied axially without a definite pattern with increasing height in the dominant tree, and they decreased upward in the suppressed tree. Ring width decreased radially from the pith outward in the juvenile wood, and fluctuated in the mature wood. Axially, the ring width decreased with increasing height slightly in the mature wood, and it increased in the juvenile wood with height from the 1.5 m height upward, reaching a maximum at the 4.5 to 7.5 m heights, and then decreasing to the top. The difference between the south and north aspect was not significant in tracheid length and ring width. Specific gravity and latewood percentage was significantly higher in the south than north aspect. The dominant tree on average had significantly higher values of tracheid length, specific gravity, and ring width than the suppressed tree

SCNet: Learning Semantic Correspondence

This paper addresses the problem of establishing semantic correspondences between images depicting different instances of the same object or scene category. Previous approaches focus on either combining a spatial regularizer with hand-crafted features, or learning a correspondence model for appearance only. We propose instead a convolutional neural network architecture, called SCNet, for learning a geometrically plausible model for semantic correspondence. SCNet uses region proposals as matching primitives, and explicitly incorporates geometric consistency in its loss function. It is trained on image pairs obtained from the PASCAL VOC 2007 keypoint dataset, and a comparative evaluation on several standard benchmarks demonstrates that the proposed approach substantially outperforms both recent deep learning architectures and previous methods based on hand-crafted features.Comment: ICCV 201

Critical thinking skills in early years

Learning to think critically set a good foundation for good thinking development in younger children. The preschool years have to be liable to incorporate strategies and develop appropriates practices of critical thinking into the classroom. However, teaching critical thinking has not been a simple task. The purpose of the research study attempts to identify critical and creative thinking among kindergarten children. In the name of this purpose the ideas are taken from the teacher candidates who teach in kindergarten level. In the study four preschool teacher candidates take part in. To get the teachers’ ideas, in the research a form is applied consisting of 19 open-ended questions was directed to the teachers and principal in a kindergarten. The frequencies of the teacher candidates’ opinions are taken by coding with the content analysis. Looking into the results of the research it is stated that teachers declare that insufficient sources of critical thinking develop in students and teachers have shallow understanding of critical thinking skills. This proposed study is expected to benefit to the education society in order to enrich young children’s capacity and skills to think critically and creatively

Ydj1 governs fungal morphogenesis and stress response, and facilitates mitochondrial protein import via Mas1 and Mas2

We thank Zhen-Yuan Lin for help in the preparation of the AP-MS samples, and Cathy Collins for technical assistance. MDL is supported by a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship (Wellcome Trust 096072), LEC is supported by a Canada Research Chair in Microbial Genomics and Infectious Disease and by Cana-dian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Grants MOP-119520 and MOP-86452. OK is supported by National Insti-tutes of Health grant 5R01GM108975. A-CG is supported by a CIHR Foundation Grant (FDN143301), Genome Cana-da Genomics Innovation Network (GIN) Node and Tech-nical Development Grants, and a Canada Research Chair in Functional Proteomics. J-PL was supported by a TD Bank Health Research Fellowship at the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute and by a Scholarship for the Next Gen-eration of Scientists from the Cancer Research Society. JLX is supported by a CIHR – Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship. The funding agencies had no role in the study design, data collection and inter-pretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Adaptation of existing behaviour models to unsaturated states: Application to CJS model

International audienceThis paper proposes a general formulation of an elastoplastic model adapted to unsaturated soils. This formulation enters within the framework of two independent state variables descriptions. The choice of a particular effective stress combined with suction is made. The definition of this effective stress is based on the formulation of an equivalent pore pressure which is an essential point of this type of models. It will be discussed in this paper. This general formulation can be seen as a methodology allowing to adapt in a straightforward way most of elastoplastic behaviour models classically used in saturated soils mechanics to unsaturated states. It is shown that this synthesis can include most of recent models developed within the same framework. The last part of this paper is devoted to the adaptation of an existing complex elastoplastic model (CJS model) to unsaturated states using the methodology previously exposed. The model thus obtained is validated on various loading paths including oedometric, isotropic or triaxial compressions and also wetting tests simulating collapse phenomenon. This model extension shows the easiness introduced by the proposed methodology to adapt a given elastoplastic model to unsaturated states. Its validation illustrates by the way the abilities of the extended model to reproduce complex volumetric responses of an unsaturated soil

Before and Beyond Divergence: A New Look at the Economic History of China and Europe [Book Review]

Before and Beyond Divergence is a model of collaboration and academic production: between two disciplines—economics and history and between two area specialists—an economic historian of Europe and a socioeconomic historian of China

Type II spiral ganglion afferent neurons drive medial olivocochlear reflex suppression of the cochlear amplifier.

The dynamic adjustment of hearing sensitivity and frequency selectivity is mediated by the medial olivocochlear efferent reflex, which suppresses the gain of the 'cochlear amplifier' in each ear. Such efferent feedback is important for promoting discrimination of sounds in background noise, sound localization and protecting the cochleae from acoustic overstimulation. However, the sensory driver for the olivocochlear reflex is unknown. Here, we resolve this longstanding question using a mouse model null for the gene encoding the type III intermediate filament peripherin (Prph). Prph((-/-)) mice lacked type II spiral ganglion neuron innervation of the outer hair cells, whereas innervation of the inner hair cells by type I spiral ganglion neurons was normal. Compared with Prph((+/+)) controls, both contralateral and ipsilateral olivocochlear efferent-mediated suppression of the cochlear amplifier were absent in Prph((-/-)) mice, demonstrating that outer hair cells and their type II afferents constitute the sensory drive for the olivocochlear efferent reflex