The Effect of Music Therapy and Peer-Mediated Interventions on Social-Communicative Responses of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of music therapy on social-communicative behaviors (eye contact, vocalization/verbalization, and gesture imitation) of children with autism spectrum disorders. The target participants were two children with a tentative diagnosis or a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders along with three typically developing children. ABAB reversal design was used to investigate the difference in the social-communicative behaviors between baseline (A) and music therapy intervention (B). The frequency of social-communicative behaviors of eye contact, vocalization/verbalization, and gestural imitation were reported through graphic analysis. In each condition, one or two typically developing children modeled the social-communicative behaviors for their peers with autism spectrum disorders. Results from the two participants indicated that the use of either intervention (non music or music) could increase one of the social-communicative behaviors in children with autism spectrum disorders, gestural imitation. As for vocalization/verbalization, the two target participants demonstrated this behavior more during the non-music condition than during the music condition. Eye contact results indicated that there was no different between the non-music and the music conditions

BURROWING AND WALKING MECHANISMS OF NORTH AMERICAN MOLES

Moles (Family Talpidae) are a classic example of extreme specialization, in their case highly derived forelimb morphologies associated with burrowing. Despite many observations of mole burrows and behaviors gathered in the field, we know very little about how and how well moles use their forelimbs to dig tunnels and to walk within the built tunnels to collect and transport food. The first chapter investigates the effect of soil compactness on two sympatric mole species under controlled laboratory conditions. My results demonstrate that increasing soil compactness impedes tunneling performance as evidenced by reduced burrowing speed, increased soil transport, shorter tunnels, shorter activity time, and less time spent burrowing continuously. Furthermore, differences in performance between the two mole species may be associated with differences in the structure and extent of their burrow systems or the morphology of their forelimbs. The second chapter investigates the kinematics of Eastern moles burrowing in loose and compact substrates. Using XROMM (X-ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology), I found that moles move substrate dorsally using elevating strokes in loose substrates and laterally using scratching strokes in compact substrates. They do not move the substrate caudally like most mammalian forelimb diggers. Furthermore, my results demonstrate that the combination of stereotypic movements of the shoulder joint, where the largest digging muscles are located, and flexibility in elbow and wrist joints makes moles extremely effective diggers in both loose and compact substrates. In the third chapter I test two hypotheses about forelimb movements during walking. The first is that moles move their shoulders by humeral long-axis rotation, as they do during burrowing and in walking echidnas. The second is that moles move their shoulders by flexion and extension in the horizontal plane, similar to sprawling reptiles. Surprisingly, my results reject both hypotheses and indicate that the way moles walk is different from that of all tetrapods that have been studied. The results of my dissertation open new horizons in the study of morphological, physiological, behavioral and ecological evolution of fossoriality, and may provide new ideas for the design of bio-inspired robots used for urban search and rescue

Colisión Cultural: La Interferencia de la Identidad Cultural Lingüística de la Lengua Materna en la Competencia Pragmática en la Lengua Meta

This reflective study explores a different perspective of intercultural communicative competency (ICC) by focusing on the speech acts that nonnative speakers of Spanish from diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds find difficult to perform competently in various contexts in Colombia. This article covers a qualitative case study using interpretative phenomenological analysis to describe these foreign learners’ experiences. It aims to understand the role of their first language, culture, and identity in their use of Spanish and intercultural communication. The data was collected through interviews and reflection notes. The findings demonstrate the interaction and negotiation between the pragmatic knowledge embedded in participants’ mother tongue and the target language as they encountered contradictions of their native cultural identity and that of the target culture.Este artículo de tipo reflexivo explora una perspectiva diferente de la competencia comunicativa intercultural (CCI) al enfocarse en cómo algunos actos del habla del español hablado en Colombia se les dificulta a hablantes no nativos provenientes de diversas procedencias lingüísticas y culturales en varios contextos en Colombia. Este articulo describe un estudio de caso cualitativo el cual utiliza el análisis fenomenológico interpretativo para describir las experiencias de estos aprendices extranjeros. Además, tiene como propósito entender el rol de su lengua nativa, cultural e identidad al utilizar el español y la comunicación intercultural. Los datos fueron recolectados a través de entrevistas y notas de reflexión. Los resultados demuestran que la interacción y negociación entre el conocimiento pragmático innato a la lengua nativa de los participantes y la del español son contradictorias de su propia identidad cultural y la del uso de la cultura objetivo

Low magnetic field reversal of electric polarization in a Y-type hexaferrite

Magnetoelectric multiferroics in which ferroelectricity and magnetism coexist have attracted extensive attention because they provide great opportunities for the mutual control of electric polarization by magnetic fields and magnetization by electric fields. From a practical point view, the main challenge in this field is to find proper multiferroic materials with a high operating temperature and great magnetoelectric sensitivity. Here we report on the magnetically tunable ferroelectricity and the giant magnetoelectric sensitivity up to 250 K in a Y-type hexaferrite, BaSrCoZnFe11AlO22. Not only the magnitude but also the sign of electric polarization can be effectively controlled by applying low magnetic fields (a few hundreds of Oe) that modifies the spiral magnetic structures. The magnetically induced ferroelectricity is stabilized even in zero magnetic field. Decayless reproducible flipping of electric polarization by oscillating low magnetic fields is shown. The maximum linear magnetoelectric coefficient reaches a high value of ~ 3.0\times10^3 ps/m at 200 K.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, a couple of errors are correcte

Electrical Control of Magnetization in Charge-ordered Multiferroic LuFe2O4

LuFe2O4 exhibits multiferroicity due to charge order on a frustrated triangular lattice. We find that the magnetization of LuFe2O4 in the multiferroic state can be electrically controlled by applying voltage pulses. Depending on with or without magnetic fields, the magnetization can be electrically switched up or down. We have excluded thermal heating effect and attributed this electrical control of magnetization to an intrinsic magnetoelectric coupling in response to the electrical breakdown of charge ordering. Our findings open up a new route toward electrical control of magnetization.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figure

Two-mode correlated multiphoton bundle emission

The preparation of correlated multiphoton sources is an important research topic in quantum optics and quantum information science. Here, we study two-mode correlated multiphoton bundle emission in a nondegenerate multiphoton Jaynes-Cummings model, which is comprised of a two-level system coupled with two cavity modes. The two-level system is driven by a near-resonant strong laser such that the Mollow regime dominates the physical processes in this system. Under certain resonance conditions, a perfect super-Rabi oscillation between the zero-photon state $|0\rangle_{a}|0\rangle_{b}$ and the ($n+m$)-photon state $|n\rangle_{a}|m\rangle_{b}$ of the two cavity modes can take place. Induced by the photon decay, the two-mode correlated multiphoton bundle emission occurs in this system. More importantly, the results show that there is an antibunching effect between the strongly-correlated photon bundles, so that the system behaves as an antibunched ($n+m$)-photon source. The work opens up a route towards achieving two-mode correlated multiphoton source device, which has potential applications in modern quantum technology.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Advanced Quantum Technologie

Team I2R-VI-FF Technical Report on EPIC-KITCHENS VISOR Hand Object Segmentation Challenge 2023

In this report, we present our approach to the EPIC-KITCHENS VISOR Hand Object Segmentation Challenge, which focuses on the estimation of the relation between the hands and the objects given a single frame as input. The EPIC-KITCHENS VISOR dataset provides pixel-wise annotations and serves as a benchmark for hand and active object segmentation in egocentric video. Our approach combines the baseline method, i.e., Point-based Rendering (PointRend) and the Segment Anything Model (SAM), aiming to enhance the accuracy of hand and object segmentation outcomes, while also minimizing instances of missed detection. We leverage accurate hand segmentation maps obtained from the baseline method to extract more precise hand and in-contact object segments. We utilize the class-agnostic segmentation provided by SAM and apply specific hand-crafted constraints to enhance the results. In cases where the baseline model misses the detection of hands or objects, we re-train an object detector on the training set to enhance the detection accuracy. The detected hand and in-contact object bounding boxes are then used as prompts to extract their respective segments from the output of SAM. By effectively combining the strengths of existing methods and applying our refinements, our submission achieved the 1st place in terms of evaluation criteria in the VISOR HOS Challenge