Gaze Behavior, Believability, Likability and the iCat

The iCat is a user-interface robot with the ability to express a range of emotions through its facial features. This paper summarizes our research whether we can increase the believability and likability of the iCat for its human partners through the application of gaze behaviour. Gaze behaviour serves several functions during social interaction such as mediating conversation flow, communicating emotional information and avoiding distraction by restricting visual input. There are several types of eye and head movements that are necessary for realizing these functions. We designed and evaluated a gaze behaviour system for the iCat robot that implements realistic models of the major types of eye and head movements found in living beings: vergence, vestibulo ocular reflexive, smooth pursuit movements and gaze shifts. We discuss how these models are integrated into the software environment of the iCat and can be used to create complex interaction scenarios. We report about some user tests and draw conclusions for future evaluation scenarios

Return to Hanging Rock: Lost Children in a Gothic Landscape

Using the philosophical position of phenomenology this article examines the ways in which ideas of wildness combine with Australian Gothic tropes such as the white colonial lost child and the bush as a haunted locale to compose key features of an Australian Ecogothic. Joan Lindsay’s enigmatic novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) has prompted scholars such as Lesley Kathryn Hawkes to describe how in Australian literature for both adults and children ‘the environment is far more than a setting or backdrop against which the plot takes place’ (Hawkes, 2011,67). On St Valentine’s Day in 1900 three young Australian girls and their teacher disappear from a school picnic at the ancient site of Mount Macedon in Victoria. The analysis, which focuses on Lindsay’s posthumously published chapter eighteen (1987) examines how elements of the material, sensing world combine with the mythological or sacred to connect the human protagonists with the gothic landscape they inhabit. The resulting intersubjectivity problematizes colonial ideology and unsettles notions of national identity. Using the philosophical position of phenomenology this article examines the ways in which ideas of wildness combine with Australian Gothic tropes such as the white colonial lost child and the bush as a haunted locale to compose key features of an Australian Ecogothic. Joan Lindsay’s enigmatic novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967) has prompted scholars such as Lesley Kathryn Hawkes to describe how in Australian literature for both adults and children ‘the environment is far more than a setting or backdrop against which the plot takes place’ (Hawkes, 2011,67). On St Valentine’s Day in 1900 three young Australian girls and their teacher disappear from a school picnic at the ancient site of Mount Macedon in Victoria. The analysis, which focuses on Lindsay’s posthumously published chapter eighteen (1987) examines how elements of the material, sensing world combine with the mythological or sacred to connect the human protagonists with the gothic landscape they inhabit. The resulting intersubjectivity problematizes colonial ideology and unsettles notions of national identity

Prognostic value of non-invasive scores based on liver stiffness measurement, spleen diameter and platelets in HIV-infected patients

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: People living with HIV (PLWH) are at high risk for advanced chronic liver disease and related adverse outcomes. We aimed to validate the prognostic value of non-invasive scores based on liver stiffness measurement (LSM) and on markers of portal hypertension (PH), namely platelets and spleen diameter, in PLWH. METHODS: We combined data from eight international cohorts of PLWH with available non-invasive scores, including LSM and the composite biomarkers liver stiffness-spleen size-to-platelet ratio score (LSPS), LSM-to-Platelet ratio (LPR) and PH risk score. Incidence and predictors of all-cause mortality, any liver-related event and classical hepatic decompensation were determined by survival analysis, controlling for competing risks for the latter two. Non-invasive scores were assessed and compared using area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC). RESULTS: We included 1695 PLWH (66.8% coinfected with hepatitis C virus). During a median follow-up of 4.7 (interquartile range 2.8-7.7) years, the incidence rates of any liver-related event, all-cause mortality and hepatic decompensation were 13.7 per 1000 persons-year (PY) (95% confidence interval [CI], 11.4-16.3), 13.8 per 1000 PY (95% CI, 11.6-16.4) and 9.9 per 1000 PY (95% CI, 8.1-12.2), respectively. The AUROC of LSM was similar to that of the composite biomarkers, ranging between 0.83 and 0.86 for any liver-related event, 0.79-0.85 for all-cause mortality and 0.87-0.88 for classical hepatic decompensation. All individual non-invasive scores remained independent predictors of clinical outcomes in multivariable analysis. CONCLUSIONS: Non-invasive scores based on LSM, spleen diameter and platelets predict clinical outcomes in PLWH. Composite biomarkers do not achieve higher prognostic performance compared to LSM alone

Prognostic value of non-invasive scores based on liver stiffness measurement, spleen diameter and platelets in HIV-infected patients.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS People living with HIV (PLWH) are at high risk for advanced chronic liver disease and related adverse outcomes. We aimed to validate the prognostic value of non-invasive scores based on liver stiffness measurement (LSM) and on markers of portal hypertension (PH), namely platelets and spleen diameter, in PLWH. METHODS We combined data from eight international cohorts of PLWH with available non-invasive scores, including LSM and the composite biomarkers liver stiffness-spleen size-to-platelet ratio score (LSPS), LSM-to-Platelet ratio (LPR) and PH risk score. Incidence and predictors of all-cause mortality, any liver-related event and classical hepatic decompensation were determined by survival analysis, controlling for competing risks for the latter two. Non-invasive scores were assessed and compared using area under the receiver operating curve (AUROC). RESULTS We included 1695 PLWH (66.8% coinfected with hepatitis C virus). During a median follow-up of 4.7 (interquartile range 2.8-7.7) years, the incidence rates of any liver-related event, all-cause mortality and hepatic decompensation were 13.7 per 1000 persons-year (PY) (95% confidence interval [CI], 11.4-16.3), 13.8 per 1000 PY (95% CI, 11.6-16.4) and 9.9 per 1000 PY (95% CI, 8.1-12.2), respectively. The AUROC of LSM was similar to that of the composite biomarkers, ranging between 0.83 and 0.86 for any liver-related event, 0.79-0.85 for all-cause mortality and 0.87-0.88 for classical hepatic decompensation. All individual non-invasive scores remained independent predictors of clinical outcomes in multivariable analysis. CONCLUSIONS Non-invasive scores based on LSM, spleen diameter and platelets predict clinical outcomes in PLWH. Composite biomarkers do not achieve higher prognostic performance compared to LSM alone

Optimal Control of Saccades by Spatial-Temporal Activity Patterns in the Monkey Superior Colliculus

A major challenge in computational neurobiology is to understand how populations of noisy, broadly-tuned neurons produce accurate goal-directed actions such as saccades. Saccades are high-velocity eye movements that have stereotyped, nonlinear kinematics; their duration increases with amplitude, while peak eye-velocity saturates for large saccades. Recent theories suggest that these characteristics reflect a deliberate strategy that optimizes a speed-accuracy tradeoff in the presence of signal-dependent noise in the neural control signals. Here we argue that the midbrain superior colliculus (SC), a key sensorimotor interface that contains a topographically-organized map of saccade vectors, is in an ideal position to implement such an optimization principle. Most models attribute the nonlinear saccade kinematics to saturation in the brainstem pulse generator downstream from the SC. However, there is little data to support this assumption. We now present new neurophysiological evidence for an alternative scheme, which proposes that these properties reside in the spatial-temporal dynamics of SC activity. As predicted by this scheme, we found a remarkably systematic organization in the burst properties of saccade-related neurons along the rostral-to-caudal (i.e., amplitude-coding) dimension of the SC motor map: peak firing-rates systematically decrease for cells encoding larger saccades, while burst durations and skewness increase, suggesting that this spatial gradient underlies the increase in duration and skewness of the eye velocity profiles with amplitude. We also show that all neurons in the recruited population synchronize their burst profiles, indicating that the burst-timing of each cell is determined by the planned saccade vector in which it participates, rather than by its anatomical location. Together with the observation that saccade-related SC cells indeed show signal-dependent noise, this precisely tuned organization of SC burst activity strongly supports the notion of an optimal motor-control principle embedded in the SC motor map as it fully accounts for the straight trajectories and kinematic nonlinearity of saccades

Influenza epidemiology and immunization during pregnancy: Final report of a World Health Organization working group

From 2014 to 2017, the World Health Organization convened a working group to evaluate influenza disease burden and vaccine efficacy to inform estimates of maternal influenza immunization program impact. The group evaluated existing systematic reviews and relevant primary studies, and conducted four new systematic reviews. There was strong evidence that maternal influenza immunization prevented influenza illness in pregnant women and their infants, although data on severe illness prevention were lacking. The limited number of studies reporting influenza incidence in pregnant women and infants under six months had highly variable estimates and underrepresented low- and middle-income countries. The evidence that maternal influenza immunization reduces the risk of adverse birth outcomes was conflicting, and many observational studies were subject to substantial bias. The lack of scientific clarity regarding disease burden or magnitude of vaccine efficacy against severe illness poses challenges for robust estimation of the potential impact of maternal influenza immunization programs

Audio-Visual Integration in a Redundant Target Paradigm: A Comparison between Rhesus Macaque and Man

The mechanisms underlying multi-sensory interactions are still poorly understood despite considerable progress made since the first neurophysiological recordings of multi-sensory neurons. While the majority of single-cell neurophysiology has been performed in anesthetized or passive-awake laboratory animals, the vast majority of behavioral data stems from studies with human subjects. Interpretation of neurophysiological data implicitly assumes that laboratory animals exhibit perceptual phenomena comparable or identical to those observed in human subjects. To explicitly test this underlying assumption, we here characterized how two rhesus macaques and four humans detect changes in intensity of auditory, visual, and audio-visual stimuli. These intensity changes consisted of a gradual envelope modulation for the sound, and a luminance step for the LED. Subjects had to detect any perceived intensity change as fast as possible. By comparing the monkeys' results with those obtained from the human subjects we found that (1) unimodal reaction times differed across modality, acoustic modulation frequency, and species, (2) the largest facilitation of reaction times with the audio-visual stimuli was observed when stimulus onset asynchronies were such that the unimodal reactions would occur at the same time (response, rather than physical synchrony), and (3) the largest audio-visual reaction-time facilitation was observed when unimodal auditory stimuli were difficult to detect, i.e., at slow unimodal reaction times. We conclude that despite marked unimodal heterogeneity, similar multisensory rules applied to both species. Single-cell neurophysiology in the rhesus macaque may therefore yield valuable insights into the mechanisms governing audio-visual integration that may be informative of the processes taking place in the human brain

Rekonstruktion radikal mutilierter Ober- und Unterlippen im Rahmen eines Interplast-Germany Einsatzes im Kongo

Einleitung: Zielsetzung der vorgestellten Lippenrekonstruktion ist der Funktionsaufbau und die Wiederherstellung der Ästhetik unter eingeschränkten Operationsbedingungen im Auslandseinsatz. Es werden 2 Fälle aus der demokratische Republik Kongo vorgestellt. Marodierende Soldaten hatten 2 jungen Männern Ober- und Unterlippen, Ohren und Finger abgeschnitten.Methode: Es wurden zwei Wangenlappen zwischen den Unterlidern und der Nase umschnitten, die Wangen bis präaurikulär unterminiert, um die beiden Lappen unterhalb der Kolumella zusammenzubringen. Mit einem Visierlappen vom Hals gelang auch die Rekonstruktion der Unterlippen. Die Innenauskleidung wurde mit zwei vertikalen Mukosalappen aus den Wangen gebildet. Ergebnis: Durch die Operationen gelang ein nahezu vollständiger Lippenschluss wodurch Gingiva und Zähne bedeckt werden konnten. Die Sensibilität in den rekonstruierten Oberlippen war bei beiden Patienten von Anfang an erhalten. Die Verwendung des Platysmas bei der Rekonstruktion der Unterlippe macht geringe Bewegungen in ca. 6 Monaten wahrscheinlich. Die Rekonstruktion des Lippenrotes mit Wangenmukosa gelang bei den beiden beschriebenen Fällen nur partiell und muss durch einen Folgeeingriff vervollständigt werden.Diskussion: Das beschriebene Verfahren stellt eine sichere Methode zur Rekonstruktion der Ober- und Unterlippe dar und bietet ein gutes funktionelles und ästhetisches Resultat. Besonders in Regionen mit geringen Ressourcen und eingeschränkten technischen Möglichkeiten eröffnet dieses Verfahren eine Alternative zum Einsatz freier mikrovaskulärer Transplantate.Der Erstautor gibt keinen Interessenkonflikt an