The Effect of Experience Upon the Visual and Haptic Discrimination of 3-D Object Shape

Both our sense of touch and our sense of vision allow us to perceive common object properties such as size, shape, and texture. The extent of this functional overlap has been studied in relation to infant perception (Bushnell & Weinberger, 1987; Gibson & Walker, 1984; Streri, 1987; Streri & Gentaz, 2003), overlap in brain regions (Amedi, Malach, Hendler, Peled, & Zohary, 2001; Deibert, Kraut, Kermen, & Hart, 1999; James, Humphrey, Gati, Menon, & Goodale, 2002), and adult perception (Gibson, 1962, 1963, 1966; Klatzky, Lederman, & Reed, 1987; Lakatos & Marks, 1999; Norman, Norman, Clayton, Lianekhammy, & Zielke, 2004). The current experiment extended the findings of Norman et al. (2004) by examining the effect of experience upon the visual and haptic discrimination of 3-D object shape, as well as examining for differences in how long visual and haptic shape representations can be held in short-term memory. Participants were asked to compare the shapes of two objects either within a single sensory modality (both objects presented visually or haptically) or across the sensory modalities (one object presented visually, the other presented haptically) for 120 trials. Their task was to compare whether the objects possessed the same or different 3-D shapes. The objects were presented for a duration of 3 seconds each, with a 3-, 9-, or 15-second interstimulus interval (ISI) between them. Both the unimodal (visual-visual and haptichaptic) and cross-modal (visual-haptic and haptic-visual) conditions exhibited a linear pattern of learning, and were unaffected by the various ISI\u27s used. However, different levels of discrimination accuracies were observed for the various groups with the highest level of accuracy occurring for the visual-visual group (M = 78.65 % correct) and the lowest level of accuracy occurring for the haptic-visual group (M = 65.31 % correct). Different patterns of errors for same versus different trials were observed for the unimodal and cross-modal conditions. Taken together, the results of the current experiment give us a better understanding of the similarities and differences that exist between the visual and haptic sensory modalities representations of 3-D object shape

Waiting for the better reward: Comparison of delay of gratification in young children across two cultures.

Delay of gratification-a form of self-control-is the ability to forsake immediately available rewards in order to obtain larger-valued outcomes in future, which develops throughout the pre-school years. The majority of previous research in this area has been conducted with Western populations, therefore knowledge of Eastern children's performance is scarcer. Here, utilising on a recently published dataset of British children (n = 61), we further tested delay of gratification in 3 to 5-year-old Chinese children (n = 75) using Bramlett et al.'s (2012) delay choice paradigm. The paradigm was previously used in non-human primates and it featured a mechanized rotating tray that sequentially moves rewards within reach. Additionally, we administered 3 inhibitory control tasks and 1 standardised delay choice task to Chinese pre-schoolers (British children were not tested). We aimed to investigate the influence of culture, reward type and reward visibility on pre-schoolers' ability to delay gratification. We found significant age-related improvements in delay of gratification ability in both countries and children performed better when presented with rewards varying in quality than quantity. Consistent with previous cross-cultural literature, Chinese children showed better overall performance than their British peers when reward visibility was manipulated (though reward visibility itself had no significant effect on performance). There were significant correlations in Chinese children's performance in Bramlett et al.'s (2012) delay choice paradigm and performance in some (though not all tested) inhibitory control tasks. We discuss these results in relation to task demands and the broader social orientation of self-control. We concluded that the intuitive comparative assessment of self-control task taps into children's delay of gratification ability. Our results emphasize the importance of testing for socio-cultural influences on children's cognitive development

A Bifunctional Amino Acid Enables Both Covalent Chemical Capture and Isolation of in Vivo Protein–Protein Interactions

In vivo covalent chemical capture by using photoactivatable unnatural amino acids (UAAs) is a powerful tool for the identification of transient protein–protein interactions (PPIs) in their native environment. However, the isolation and characterization of the crosslinked complexes can be challenging. Here, we report the first in vivo incorporation of the bifunctional UAA BPKyne for the capture and direct labeling of crosslinked protein complexes through post‐crosslinking functionalization of a bioorthogonal alkyne handle. Using the prototypical yeast transcriptional activator Gal4, we demonstrate that BPKyne is incorporated at the same level as the commonly used photoactivatable UAA pBpa and effectively captures the Gal4–Gal80 transcriptional complex. Post‐crosslinking, the Gal4–Gal80 adduct was directly labeled by treatment of the alkyne handle with a biotin‐azide probe; this enabled facile isolation and visualization of the crosslinked adduct from whole‐cell lysate. This bifunctional amino acid extends the utility of the benzophenone crosslinker and expands our toolbox of chemical probes for mapping PPIs in their native cellular environment.Using the bifunctional unnatural amino acid, BPKyne, we have developed a strategy to capture and directly label transient protein–protein interactions (PPIs) in their native environment. Click chemical functionalization post‐crosslinking with a biotin–azide probe enabled the isolation of transcriptional protein complexes from yeast cells. This amino acid will expand the toolbox for the discovery of new PPIs in live cells.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135955/1/cbic201600578.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135955/2/cbic201600578_am.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135955/3/cbic201600578-sup-0001-misc_information.pd

Covalent Chemical Cochaperones of the p300/CBP GACKIX Domain

The GACKIX activator binding domain has been a compelling target for small‐molecule probe discovery because of the central role of activator–GACKIX complexes in diseases ranging from leukemia to memory disorders. Additionally, GACKIX is an ideal model to dissect the context‐dependent function of activator–coactivator complexes. However, the dynamic and transient protein–protein interactions (PPIs) formed by GACKIX are difficult targets for small molecules. An additional complication is that activator‐binding motifs, such as GACKIX, are found in multiple coactivators, making specificity difficult to attain. In this study, we demonstrate that the strategy of tethering can be used to rapidly discover highly specific covalent modulators of the dynamic PPIs between activators and coactivators. These serve as both ortho‐ and allosteric modulators, enabling the tunable assembly or disassembly of the activator–coactivator complexes formed between the KIX domain and its cognate activator binding partners MLL and CREB. The molecules maintain their function and selectivity, even in human cell lysates and in bacterial cells, and thus, will ultimately be highly useful probes for cellular studies.Joining forces: Reversible covalent modulators of the conformationally dynamic KIX coactivator are readily converted into irreversible inhibitors by replacement of the disulfide moiety. The irreversible inhibitors are effective and selective, even in human cell lysate.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146336/1/cbic201800173-sup-0001-misc_information.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146336/2/cbic201800173.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146336/3/cbic201800173_am.pd

BIM-to-BRICK: Using graph modeling for IoT/BMS and spatial semantic data interoperability within digital data models of buildings

The holistic management of a building requires data from heterogeneous sources such as building management systems (BMS), Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensor networks, and building information models. Data interoperability is a key component to eliminate silos of information, and using semantic web technologies like the BRICK schema, an effort to standardize semantic descriptions of the physical, logical, and virtual assets in buildings and the relationships between them, is a suitable approach. However, current data integration processes can involve significant manual interventions. This paper presents a methodology to automatically collect, assemble, and integrate information from a building information model to a knowledge graph. The resulting application, called BIM-to-BRICK, is run on the SDE4 building located in Singapore. BIM-to-BRICK generated a bidirectional link between a BIM model of 932 instances and experimental data collected for 17 subjects into 458 BRICK objects and 1219 relationships in 17 seconds. The automation of this approach can be compared to traditional manual mapping of data types. This scientific innovation incentivizes the convergence of disparate data types and structures in built-environment applications

Opioid And Naloxone Prescribing Practices In Mississippi

The purpose of this study was to determine whether primary care providers (PCPs) in Mississippi are following the selected Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines published in March 2016 for prescribing opioids for chronic, non-cancer pain. The study also sought to determine if the selected providers prescribed naloxone for opioid overdose reversal. Drug overdoses have increased exponentially in the last 3 decades in the United States (Doyon, Aks, & Schaeffer, 2014) — leading to opioid overdose becoming the most frequent cause of accidental death. Opioid overdose death rates are so high the CDC declared it a problem of “epidemic” status in 2012 (Canada, DiRocco, & Day, 2014). Mississippi ranks as one of the highest prescribing states for opioid analgesics. For the purpose of this research, focus was placed on specific aspects o f the CDC guidelines as follows: (a) consider nonpharmacological treatment or treat with nonopioids first, (b) avoid prescribing opioids and benzodiazepines concurrently, and (c) check a urine drug screen prior to opioid initiation and yearly thereafter (CDC, 2016). The CDC now recommends prescribing naloxone, an opioid antagonist, to patients at risk for opioid overdose. Naloxone has demonstrated effectiveness in reducing opioid overdose mortality. A nonexperimental, quantitative, descriptive, retrospective review of charts was performed in 6 primary care clinics in Mississippi staffed by physicians and family nurse practitioners. A convenience sampling of 600 charts for retrospective chart review was conducted. Inclusion criteria were age 18 years or older, medically treated long-term with opioids (\u3e 2 prescriptions written \u3e21 days apart) for chronic non-cancer pain, and prescribed by a PCP. The findings suggested that PCPs in Mississippi are not eonsistently following CDC guidelines for opioid prescribing. It should also be noted that, of the 600 charts reviewed, none of the patients were prescribed naloxone for reversal of a potential opioid overdose. Research demonstrated a need for increased awareness and education among PCPs regarding CDC guidelines for prescribing opioids

Improving the predictions of ML-corrected climate models with novelty detection

While previous works have shown that machine learning (ML) can improve the prediction accuracy of coarse-grid climate models, these ML-augmented methods are more vulnerable to irregular inputs than the traditional physics-based models they rely on. Because ML-predicted corrections feed back into the climate model's base physics, the ML-corrected model regularly produces out of sample data, which can cause model instability and frequent crashes. This work shows that adding semi-supervised novelty detection to identify out-of-sample data and disable the ML-correction accordingly stabilizes simulations and sharply improves the quality of predictions. We design an augmented climate model with a one-class support vector machine (OCSVM) novelty detector that provides better temperature and precipitation forecasts in a year-long simulation than either a baseline (no-ML) or a standard ML-corrected run. By improving the accuracy of coarse-grid climate models, this work helps make accurate climate models accessible to researchers without massive computational resources.Comment: Appearing at Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning Workshop at NeurIPS 202

Twenty-four or Four-and-twenty : Language Modulates Cross-Modal Matching for Multi-Digit Numbers in Children and Adults

Does number–word structure have a long-lasting impact on transcoding? Contrary to English, German number words comprise decade–unit inversion (e.g., vierundzwanzig is literally translated as four-and-twenty). To investigate the mental representation of numbers, we tested the effect of visual and linguistic–morphological characteristics on the development of verbal–visual transcoding. In a longitudinal cross-linguistic design, response times (RTs) in a number-matching experiment were analyzed in Grade 2 (119 German-speaking and 179 English-speaking children) and in Grade 3 (131 German-speaking and 160 English-speaking children). To test for long-term effects, the same experiment was given to 38 German-speaking and 42 English-speaking adults. Participants needed to decide whether a spoken number matched a subsequent visual Arabic number. Systematic variation of digits in the nonmatching distractors allowed comparison of three different transcoding accounts (lexicalization, visual, and linguistic–morphological). German speakers were generally slower in rejecting inverted number distractors than English speakers. Across age groups, German speakers were more distracted by Arabic numbers that included the correct unit digit, whereas English speakers showed stronger distraction when the correct decade digit was included. These RT patterns reflect differences in number–word morphology. The individual cost of rejecting an inverted distractor (inversion effect) predicted arithmetic skills in German-speaking second-graders only. The moderate relationship between the efficiency to identify a matching number and arithmetic performance could be observed cross-linguistically in all age groups but was not significant in German-speaking adults. Thus, findings provide consistent evidence of a persistent impact of number–word structure on number processing, whereas the relationship with arithmetic performance was particularly pronounced in young children