Modeling Human Infant Learning in Embodied Artificial Entities to Produce Grounded Concepts

I present a system for concept development in an artificial entity. The concept development is designed around the foundations of human cognition while at the same time remaining grounded in the agent or robot’s own perception of its world

Grounded Concept Development Using Introspective Atoms

In this paper we present a system that uses its underlying physiology, a hierarchical memory and a collection of memory management algorithms to learn concepts as cases and to build higher level concepts from experiences represented as sequences of atoms. Using a memory structure that requires all base memories to be grounded in introspective atoms, the system builds a set of grounded concepts that must all be formed from and applied to this same set of atoms. All interaction the system has with its environment must be represented by the system itself and therefore, given a complete ability to perceive its own physiological and mental processes,can be modeled and recreated

Creation of a Style Independent Intelligent Autonomous Citation Indexer to Support Academic Research

This paper describes the current state of RUgle, a system for classifying and indexing papers made available on the World Wide Web, in a domain-independent and universal manner. By building RUgle with the most relaxed restrictions possible on the formatting of the documents it can process, we hope to create a system that can combine the best features of currently available closed library searches that are designed to facilitate academic research with the inclusive nature of general purpose search engines that continually crawl the web and add documents to their indexed database

Shock Wave-Induced Damage of a Protein by Void Collapse

In this study, we report on a series of molecular dynamics simulations that were used to examine the effects of shock waves on a membrane-bound ion channel. A planar shock wave was found to compress the ion channel upon impact, but the protein geometry resembles the crystal structure as soon as the solvent density begins to dissipate. When a void was placed in close proximity to the membrane, the shock wave proved to be more destructive to the protein due to formation of a nanojet that results from the asymmetric collapse of the void. The nanojet was able to cause significant structural changes to the protein even at low piston velocities that are not able to directly cause poration of the membrane

Adult Relationships in Multiple Contexts and Associations with Adolescent Mental Health

Purpose: Adult relationships provide critical support for adolescents because of their potential to foster positive development and provide protective influences. Few studies examine multiple ecological layers of adult relationships in connection with well-being and depression. This study examines the influence of relationships from multiple contexts for adolescents and their mental health. Method: Data from the 2011 California Healthy Kids Survey was used for this analysis; a sample of 7th-, 9th-, and 11th-grade students (N = 14,931) was drawn from 6 school districts in Southern California. Results: Regression analyses revealed that parent, teacher, and community adult support were all significantly positively associated with well-being and significantly negatively associated with depression. Discussion: Social support explained more variance in well-being than in depression, indicating that adult support may be more important for supporting well-being. This study supports the belief that individual categories and combinations of adult support are important

Confronting law affectively: encounters of a Patpong sex tourist

When considering spaces of sex-work such as Patpong in Bangkok, Thailand, the inclination is to be drawn into habitual debates concerning the legitimacy of sex-work and the clear objectification of sex-workers. While these concerns are valid and real, there are significant absences in terms of the theoretical mapping of the space, such as the affect of the presence of law, bodies, space and the sexual encounter itself. Law emerges as the most significant presence, since it both forms the transactional surface of Patpong and produces the confusion and revilement that results from the confluence of cold legal exchange with the tactile intimacy of the sexual encounter. This text explores the ethnographic space of Patpong in order to understand ways in which law’s transactional, effective surface is both embodied through subjectivication and spatially emplaced, yet also disrupted through the affective agency of the bodies and spaces it enfolds in order to produce this surface. This exploration will point to the limitations of law’s effective surface and suggest ways in which law might be located within a regime of affect, which returns the law to the body it subjectivises

QUEnch assiSTed (QUEST) MRI Used as a Novel Approach to Identify Reactive Oxygen Species as a Result of Experimental TBI

Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) generates reactive oxygen species (ROS), promoting inflammatory processes and impeding TBI recovery. Within the VA population, over 70% of military personnel that sustain a TBI receive opioid-based pain relief, however, opiates may actually exacerbate post-TBI complications through its documented recruitment of oxidative and inflammatory systems. Thus, we hypothesize that TBI and opioid treatment act synergistically to worsen post-TBI oxidative stress. Methods: Mice were exposed to either TBI or sham injury and administered morphine or saline in the acute post-injury period. Afterwards, neuroimaging was conducted using a novel technique, QUEnch assiSTed (QUEST) MRI, which compares standard MRI signals across mice that acutely receive an antioxidant “quench” therapy and those receiving saline as control. Therefore, differential MRI signals between these groups are an index of ROS generation. Changes in hippocampus and cortex signals were measured, as these structures are most commonly affected by TBI. Methylene blue and α-lipoic acid were used as antioxidants in the quenching step as they halt mitochondrial ROS production and scavenge excess ROS, respectively. Results: No significant changes in ROS levels were detected as a result of TBI, opioid exposure or their combination using QUEST MRI in either the cortex or hippocampus. Conclusions and Future Directions: While QUEST imaging did not yield significant changes between experimental groups, future work will include ex-vivo biochemical ROS analyses from harvested tissues, which will provide higher resolution quantification of oxidative processes than that of QUEST MRI

Surface storage dynamics in large rivers: Comparing three‐dimensional particle transport, one‐dimensional fractional derivative, and multirate transient storage models

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95172/1/wrcr13006.pd