Journey mapping from a crew's perspective: Understanding rail experiences

Technological developments present diverse opportunities to modernise services for the rail industry. Systems can be implemented to improve passengers’ experiences, but these may also affect the experiences of crew working on board trains. This first-of-a-kind research extends the concept of customer journey mapping as a design tool to understand the experiences of train crew. To produce these crew journey maps, interviews and user observation methods were adopted (N = 22). Results show that two main negative touchpoints for the crew occur at the platform-train interface and during revenue protection activities. This paper presents an innovative methodological contribution around journey mapping to better understand rail experiences, but revolving around the crew rather than the expected consumer experience. We conclude this paper proposing requirements for technological systems and indicate opportunities for the design of systems to generate human-centred improvements for the working practices and experiences of train crew

The female perspective of personality in a wild songbird: repeatable aggressiveness relates to exploration behaviour

ABSTRACT: Males often express traits that improve competitive ability, such as aggressiveness. Females also express such traits but our understanding about why is limited. Intraspecific aggression between females might be used to gain access to reproductive resources but simultaneously incurs costs in terms of energy and time available for reproductive activities, resulting in a trade-off. Although consistent individual differences in female behaviour (i.e. personality) like aggressiveness are likely to influence these reproductive trade-offs, little is known about the consistency of aggressiveness in females. To quantify aggression we presented a female decoy to free-living female great tits (Parus major) during the egg-laying period, and assessed whether they were consistent in their response towards this decoy. Moreover, we assessed whether female aggression related to consistent individual differences in exploration behaviour in a novel environment. We found that females consistently differed in aggressiveness, although first-year females were on average more aggressive than older females. Moreover, conform life history theory predictions, ‘fast’ exploring females were more aggressive towards the decoy than ‘slow’ exploring females. Given that personality traits are often heritable, and correlations between behaviours can constrain short term adaptive evolution, our findings highlight the importance of studying female aggression within a multivariate behavioural framework

Upper limb activity in myoelectric prosthesis users is biased towards the intact limb and appears unrelated to goal-directed task performance

Studies of the effectiveness of prosthetic hands involve assessing user performance on functional tasks in the lab/clinic, sometimes combined with self-report of real-world use. In this paper we compare real-world upper limb activity between a group of 20 myoelectric prosthesis users and 20 anatomically intact adults. Activity was measured from wrist-worn accelerometers over a 7-day period. The temporal patterns in upper limb activity are presented and the balance of activity between the two limbs quantified. We also evaluated the prosthesis users’ performance on a goal-directed task, characterised using measures including task success rate, completion time, gaze behaviour patterns, and kinematics (e.g. variability and patterns in hand aperture). Prosthesis users were heavily reliant on their intact limb during everyday life, in contrast to anatomically intact adults who demonstrated similar reliance on both upper limbs. There was no significant correlation between the amount of time a prosthesis was worn and reliance on the intact limb, and there was no significant correlation between either of these measures and any of the assessed kinematic and gaze-related measures of performance. We found participants who had been prescribed a prosthesis for longer to demonstrate more symmetry in their overall upper limb activity, although this was not reflected in the symmetry of unilateral limb use. With the exception of previously published case studies, this is the first report of real world upper limb activity in myoelectric prosthesis users and confirms the widely held belief that users are heavily reliant on their intact limb

The exoskeletons are here

It is a fantastic time for the field of robotic exoskeletons. Recent advances in actuators, sensors, materials, batteries, and computer processors have given new hope to creating the exoskeletons of yesteryear's science fiction. While the most common goal of an exoskeleton is to provide superhuman strength or endurance, scientists and engineers around the world are building exoskeletons with a wide range of diverse purposes. Exoskeletons can help patients with neurological disabilities improve their motor performance by providing task specific practice. Exoskeletons can help physiologists better understand how the human body works by providing a novel experimental perturbation. Exoskeletons can even help power mobile phones, music players, and other portable electronic devices by siphoning mechanical work performed during human locomotion. This special thematic series on robotic lower limb exoskeletons and orthoses includes eight papers presenting novel contributions to the field. The collective message of the papers is that robotic exoskeletons will contribute in many ways to the future benefit of humankind, and that future is not that distant

Operant Sensation Seeking Requires Metabotropic Glutamate Receptor 5 (mGluR5)

Pharmacological and genetic studies have suggested that the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) is critically involved in mediating the reinforcing effects of drugs of abuse, but not food. The purpose of this study was to use mGluR5 knockout (KO), heterozygous (Het), and wildtype (WT) mice to determine if mGluR5 modulates operant sensation seeking (OSS), an operant task that uses varied sensory stimuli as a reinforcer. We found that mGluR5 KO mice had significantly reduced OSS responding relative to WT mice, while Het mice displayed a paradoxical increase in OSS responding. Neither KO nor Het mice exhibited altered operant responding for food as a reinforcer. Further, we assessed mGluR5 KO, Het and WT mice across a battery of cocaine locomotor, place preference and anxiety related tests. Although KO mice showed expected differences in some locomotor and anxiety measures, Het mice either exhibited no phenotype or an intermediate one. In total, these data demonstrate a key role for mGluR5 in OSS, indicating an important role for this receptor in reinforcement-based behavior

Reverse-Phase Phosphoproteome Analysis of Signaling Pathways Induced by Rift Valley Fever Virus in Human Small Airway Epithelial Cells

Rift valley fever virus (RVFV) infection is an emerging zoonotic disease endemic in many countries of sub-Saharan Africa and in Egypt. In this study we show that human small airway epithelial cells are highly susceptible to RVFV virulent strain ZH-501 and the attenuated strain MP-12. We used the reverse-phase protein arrays technology to identify phosphoprotein signaling pathways modulated during infection of cultured airway epithelium. ZH-501 infection induced activation of MAP kinases (p38, JNK and ERK) and downstream transcriptional factors [STAT1 (Y701), ATF2 (T69/71), MSK1 (S360) and CREB (S133)]. NF-κB phosphorylation was also increased. Activation of p53 (S15, S46) correlated with the increased levels of cleaved effector caspase-3, -6 and -7, indicating activation of the extrinsic apoptotic pathway. RVFV infection downregulated phosphorylation of a major anti-apoptotic regulator of survival pathways, AKT (S473), along with phosphorylation of FOX 01/03 (T24/31) which controls cell cycle arrest downstream from AKT. Consistent with this, the level of apoptosis inhibitor XIAP was decreased. However, the intrinsic apoptotic pathway marker, caspase-9, demonstrated only a marginal activation accompanied by an increased level of the inhibitor of apoptosome formation, HSP27. Concentration of the autophagy marker, LC3B, which often accompanies the pro-survival signaling, was decreased. Cumulatively, our analysis of RVFV infection in lung epithelium indicated a viral strategy directed toward the control of cell apoptosis through a number of transcriptional factors. Analyses of MP-12 titers in challenged cells in the presence of MAPK inhibitors indicated that activation of p38 represents a protective cell response while ERK activation controls viral replication

A neural integrator model for planning and value-based decision making of a robotics assistant

Modern manufacturing and assembly environments are characterized by a high variability in the built process which challenges human–robot cooperation. To reduce the cognitive workload of the operator, the robot should not only be able to learn from experience but also to plan and decide autonomously. Here, we present an approach based on Dynamic Neural Fields that apply brain-like computations to endow a robot with these cognitive functions. A neural integrator is used to model the gradual accumulation of sensory and other evidence as time-varying persistent activity of neural populations. The decision to act is modeled by a competitive dynamics between neural populations linked to different motor behaviors. They receive the persistent activation pattern of the integrators as input. In the first experiment, a robot learns rapidly by observation the sequential order of object transfers between an assistant and an operator to subsequently substitute the assistant in the joint task. The results show that the robot is able to proactively plan the series of handovers in the correct order. In the second experiment, a mobile robot searches at two different workbenches for a specific object to deliver it to an operator. The object may appear at the two locations in a certain time period with independent probabilities unknown to the robot. The trial-by-trial decision under uncertainty is biased by the accumulated evidence of past successes and choices. The choice behavior over a longer period reveals that the robot achieves a high search efficiency in stationary as well as dynamic environments.The work received financial support from FCT through the PhD fellowships PD/BD/128183/2016 and SFRH/BD/124912/2016, the project “Neurofield” (PTDC/MAT-APL/31393/2017) and the research centre CMAT within the project UID/MAT/00013/2013

A cyclopalladated complex interacts with mitochondrial membrane thiol-groups and induces the apoptotic intrinsic pathway in murine and cisplatin-resistant human tumor cells

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Systemic therapy for cancer metastatic lesions is difficult and generally renders a poor clinical response. Structural analogs of cisplatin, the most widely used synthetic metal complexes, show toxic side-effects and tumor cell resistance. Recently, palladium complexes with increased stability are being investigated to circumvent these limitations, and a biphosphinic cyclopalladated complex {Pd₂[<it>S_(-)</it>C², N-dmpa]₂(μ-dppe)Cl₂} named C7a efficiently controls the subcutaneous development of B16F10-Nex2 murine melanoma in syngeneic mice. Presently, we investigated the melanoma cell killing mechanism induced by C7a, and extended preclinical studies.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>B16F10-Nex2 cells were treated <it>in vitro </it>with C7a in the presence/absence of DTT, and several parameters related to apoptosis induction were evaluated. Preclinical studies were performed, and mice were endovenously inoculated with B16F10-Nex2 cells, intraperitoneally treated with C7a, and lung metastatic nodules were counted. The cytotoxic effects and the respiratory metabolism were also determined in human tumor cell lines treated <it>in vitro </it>with C7a.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Cyclopalladated complex interacts with thiol groups on the mitochondrial membrane proteins, causes dissipation of the mitochondrial membrane potential, and induces Bax translocation from the cytosol to mitochondria, colocalizing with a mitochondrial tracker. C7a also induced an increase in cytosolic calcium concentration, mainly from intracellular compartments, and a significant decrease in the ATP levels. Activation of effector caspases, chromatin condensation and DNA degradation, suggested that C7a activates the apoptotic intrinsic pathway in murine melanoma cells. In the preclinical studies, the C7a complex protected against murine metastatic melanoma and induced death in several human tumor cell lineages <it>in vitro</it>, including cisplatin-resistant ones. The mitochondria-dependent cell death was also induced by C7a in human tumor cells.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The cyclopalladated C7a complex is an effective chemotherapeutic anticancer compound against primary and metastatic murine and human tumors, including cisplatin-resistant cells, inducing apoptotic cell death via the intrinsic pathway.</p

Deletions in the Repertoire of Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 Type III Secretion Effector Genes Reveal Functional Overlap among Effectors

The γ-proteobacterial plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 uses the type III secretion system to inject ca. 28 Avr/Hop effector proteins into plants, which enables the bacterium to grow from low inoculum levels to produce bacterial speck symptoms in tomato, Arabidopsis thaliana, and (when lacking hopQ1-1) Nicotiana benthamiana. The effectors are collectively essential but individually dispensable for the ability of the bacteria to defeat defenses, grow, and produce symptoms in plants. Eighteen of the effector genes are clustered in six genomic islands/islets. Combinatorial deletions involving these clusters and two of the remaining effector genes revealed a redundancy-based structure in the effector repertoire, such that some deletions diminished growth in N. benthamiana only in combination with other deletions. Much of the ability of DC3000 to grow in N. benthamiana was found to be due to five effectors in two redundant-effector groups (REGs), which appear to separately target two high-level processes in plant defense: perception of external pathogen signals (AvrPto and AvrPtoB) and deployment of antimicrobial factors (AvrE, HopM1, HopR1). Further support for the membership of HopR1 in the same REG as AvrE was gained through bioinformatic analysis, revealing the existence of an AvrE/DspA/E/HopR effector superfamily, which has representatives in virtually all groups of proteobacterial plant pathogens that deploy type III effectors