Creative Robotics Studio

The Creative Robotics Studio seeks to explore how robotic motion affects an audience’s emotional response towards the robot itself. The team will develop an experiment to empirically measure a spectrum of emotional responses from fear or disgust to comfort or congeniality and then use those findings to develop a set of motion guidelines and tools for increasing the accuracy and efficacy of Human Robot Interactions

A Heterogeneous Swarm Solution for Disaster Reconnaissance: A Feasibility Study

The disaster mitigation process is dangerous to search-and-rescue (S&R) personnel. Organizations work to develop robotic technologies for disaster response. However, disaster robotics is often characterized by large, bulky, and expensive systems. The goal of this MQP is to analyze the feasibility of a simple, cost-effective heterogeneous robot swarm to map a disaster location for on-site S&R personnel. We designed a ground robot prototype that can be dropped by a drone. We tested collaborative algorithms to perform mapping of cluttered environments by both the ground robot and the drone. Our study also involves tests on durability and disposability of the droppable robot and scalability tests of the mapping algorithms

Tradition and Innovation in Classical Sociology: Tenth Anniversary Report of JCS

Perhaps the very idea of ‘classical sociology’ is a contradiction in terms; sociology was originally that social science peculiarly concerned with the study of the processes of modernization and the condition of modernity, that is, with the critical examination of ‘post-traditional’ developments and hence ‘post-classical’ forms of social organization. Its concerns have broadened subsequently, but the focus of sociology remains on the exploration of the nature and development of social structure and social action in the post-traditional world. In the nineteenth century, sociologists invented new concepts and experimented with new methods to study the emergence of unprecedented social phenomena and the rise of a type of society that was variously called ‘modern society’, ‘industrial society’, and ‘capitalist society’. In the twentieth century, there was a further elaboration of key sociological concepts, and it became increasingly popular to proclaim the rise of yet another form of society, described as ‘post-industrial society’, ‘late modern society’, ‘post-modern society’, or ‘network society’. In the current century, the idea of globalization has swept everything before it, leading to the notion that ‘society’ has now been replaced by flows and networks of people, objects, and ideas. With the transition from traditional to modern societies, the integrative power of Gemeinschaft began to compete with the systemic power of Gesellschaft; with the transition from modern to late modern societies, the local horizons of our Lebenswelt appear to be increasingly shaped by the deterritorialized networks of the Weltgesellschaft. If we are ‘post-traditional’, surely we are also ‘post-classical’. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that many contemporary sociologists have some difficulty accepting the very idea of classical sociology

Thalamic inputs to dorsomedial striatum are involved in inhibitory control: evidence from the five-choice serial reaction time task in rats

Rationale Corticostriatal circuits are widely implicated in the top-down control of attention including inhibitory control and behavioural flexibility. However, recent neurophysiological evidence also suggests a role for thalamic inputs to striatum in behaviours related to salient, reward-paired cues. Objectives Here, we used designer receptors exclusively activated by designer drugs (DREADDs) to investigate the role of parafascicular (Pf) thalamic inputs to the dorsomedial striatum (DMS) using the five-choice serial reaction time task (5CSRTT) in rats. Methods The 5CSRTT requires sustained attention in order to detect spatially and temporally distributed visual cues and provides measures of inhibitory control related to impulsivity (premature responses) and compulsivity (perseverative responses). Rats underwent bilateral Pf injections of the DREADD vector, AAV2-CaMKIIa-HA-hM4D(Gi)-IRES-mCitrine. The DREADD agonist, clozapine N-oxide (CNO; 1 μl bilateral; 3 μM) or vehicle, was injected into DMS 1 h before behavioural testing. Task parameters were manipulated to increase attention load or reduce stimulus predictability respectively. Results We found that inhibition of the Pf-DMS projection significantly increased perseverative responses when stimulus predictability was reduced but had no effect on premature responses or response accuracy, even under increased attentional load. Control experiments showed no effects on locomotor activity in an open field. Conclusions These results complement previous lesion work in which the DMS and orbitofrontal cortex were similarly implicated in perseverative responses and suggest a specific role for thalamostriatal inputs in inhibitory control

How ‘demos’ met ‘cracy’: debt, inequality, money

The recurrence of ever more destructive economic crises and patterns of pervasive indebtedness and inequality threaten the social fabric of our societies. Our main responses to these trends have been partial, focusing on symptoms rather than causes, often exacerbating rather than improving the underlying socio-economic dynamics. To reflect on these conditions and on ‘what needs to be done’ this article turns to a similar socio-economic malaise faced by the city-state of Athens in the 6th century BC. Most historical studies dealing with this crisis focus on the comprehensive debt relief policy (seisachteia) implemented by Solon. We argue that this debt relief, although necessary, was the least important of Solon’s reforms. Solon read the problem of debt as a problem of money so he went on to reform the monetary and exchange system. However, he did not think that these reforms alone could restore socioeconomic sustainability. For this, a redefinition of what was counted as valuable economic activity and as income had also to take place. Moreover, for all these to work, citizens had to be involved more in the commons. Far from only achieving socioeconomic sustainability, these reforms gave rise gradually to the demos that we meet in the golden age of Democracy. Such a broad historical horizon may help us grasp better the problems, stakes and challenges of our times

Regulation of ventilatory sensitivity and carotid body proliferation in hypoxia by the PHD2/HIF-2 pathway.

Ventilatory sensitivity to hypoxia increases in response to continued hypoxic exposure as part of acute acclimatisation. Although this process is incompletely understood, insights have been gained through studies of the hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) hydroxylase system. Genetic studies implicate these pathways widely in the integrated physiology of hypoxia, through effects on developmental or adaptive processes. In keeping with this, mice that are heterozygous for the principal HIF prolyl hydroxylase, PHD2, show enhanced ventilatory sensitivity to hypoxia and carotid body hyperplasia. Here we have sought to understand this process better through comparative analysis of inducible and constitutive inactivation of PHD2 and its principal targets HIF-1α and HIF-2α. We demonstrate that general inducible inactivation of PHD2 in tamoxifen-treated Phd2(f/f);Rosa26(+/CreERT2) mice, like constitutive, heterozygous PHD2 deficiency, enhances hypoxic ventilatory responses (HVRs: 7.2 ± 0.6 vs. 4.4 ± 0.4 ml min(-1) g(-1) in controls, P < 0.01). The ventilatory phenotypes associated with both inducible and constitutive inactivation of PHD2 were strongly compensated for by concomitant inactivation of HIF-2α, but not HIF-1α. Furthermore, inducible inactivation of HIF-2α strikingly impaired ventilatory acclimatisation to chronic hypoxia (HVRs: 4.1 ± 0.5 vs. 8.6 ± 0.5 ml min(-1) g(-1) in controls, P < 0.0001), as well as carotid body cell proliferation (400 ± 81 vs. 2630 ± 390 bromodeoxyuridine-positive cells mm(-2) in controls, P < 0.0001). The findings demonstrate the importance of the PHD2/HIF-2α enzyme-substrate couple in modulating ventilatory sensitivity to hypoxia

What's new pussycat? A genealogy of animal celebrity

Animal celebrity is a human creation informing us about our socially constructed natural world. It is relational, expressive of cultural proclivities, political power plays and the quotidian everyday, as well as serious philosophical reflections on the meaning of being human. This article attempts to outline some key contours in the genealogy of animal celebrity, showing how popular culture, including fairground attractions, public relations, Hollywood movies, documentary films, zoo attractions, commercial sport and mediatised moral panics - particularly those accompanying scientific developments such as cloning - help to order, categorise and license aspects of human understanding and feelings. The nature of [animal] charisma and celebrity are explored with assistance from Jumbo the Elephant, Guy the Gorilla, Paul the clairvoyant octopus, Uggie the film star, Nénette the orang-utan and Dolly the sheep. It argues that the issue of what it is to be human lies beneath the celebritised surface or, as Donna Haraway noted, the issue 'of having to face oneself'

Attentional Processing in C57BL/6J Mice Exposed to Developmental Vitamin D Deficiency

Epidemiological evidence suggests that Developmental Vitamin D (DVD) deficiency is associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia. DVD deficiency in mice is associated with altered behaviour, however there has been no detailed investigation of cognitive behaviours in DVD-deficient mice. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of DVD deficiency on a range of cognitive tasks assessing attentional processing in C57BL/6J mice. DVD deficiency was established by feeding female C57BL/6J mice a vitamin D-deficient diet from four weeks of age. After six weeks on the diet, vitamin D-deficient and control females were mated with vitamin D-normal males and upon birth of the pups, all dams were returned to a diet containing vitamin D. The adult offspring were tested on a range of cognitive behavioural tests, including the five-choice serial reaction task (5C-SRT) and five-choice continuous performance test (5C-CPT), as well as latent inhibition using a fear conditioning paradigm. DVD deficiency was not associated with altered attentional performance on the 5C-SRT. In the 5C-CPT DVD-deficient male mice exhibited an impairment in inhibiting repetitive responses by making more perseverative responses, with no changes in premature or false alarm responding. DVD deficiency did not affect the acquisition or retention of cued fear conditioning, nor did it affect the expression of latent inhibition using a fear conditioning paradigm. DVD-deficient mice exhibited no major impairments in any of the cognitive domains tested. However, impairments in perseverative responding in DVD-deficient mice may indicate that these animals have specific alterations in systems governing compulsive or reward-seeking behaviour

Clinical Value of Prognostic Instruments to Identify Patients with an Increased Risk for Osteoporotic Fractures: Systematic Review

There is a plethora of evidence available studying the association of risk profiles and the development of osteoporotic fractures. The small number of out-of-sample validations, the large variety of study characteristics, outcomes and follow-up periods impedes from deriving robust summaries and from conclusions regarding the clinical performance of many tools. First and foremost, future activity in this field should aim at reaching a consensus among clinical experts in respect to the existing instruments. Then we call for careful validations and expedient adaptations for local circumstances of the most promising candidates

Thermal constraints and optimization of winter feeding and habitat choice in white-tailed deer

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72577/1/j.1600-0587.1991.tb00640.x.pd