Emotional Empathy as a Mechanism of Synchronisation in Child-Robot Interaction

Simulating emotional experience, emotional empathy is the fundamental ingredient of interpersonal communication. In the speaker-listener scenario, the speaker is always a child, the listener is a human or a toy robot. Two groups of neurotypical children aged 6 years on average composed the population: one Japanese (n = 20) and one French (n = 20). Revealing potential similarities in communicative exchanges in both groups when in contact with a human or a toy robot, the results might signify that emotional empathy requires the implication of an automatic identification. In this sense, emotional empathy might be considered a broad idiosyncrasy, a kind of synchronisation, offering the mind a peculiar form of communication. Our findings seem to be consistent with the assumption that children’s brains would be constructed to simulate the feelings of others in order to ensure interpersonal synchronisation

Uma contribuição à análise de perdas ocasionadas por afundamentos momentâneos de tensão.

A análise e a quantificação das perdas de carga assim como os custos associados à ocorrência de afundamentos de tensão têm sido pouco exploradas na literatura técnica. Neste contexto, esta dissertação apresenta uma metodologia que permite avaliar o impacto dos afundamentos de tensão sobre os consumidores, através da obtenção da energia não-suprida pela concessionária durante a parada dos processos e da estimação das perdas financeiras dos consumidores. O procedimento proposto também permite realizar correlações entre a energia não-suprida e perdas financeiras com as características das faltas, tais como tipo e causa das faltas, assim como o período do dia e a estação do ano. Adicionalmente, neste trabalho, também é proposto um procedimento que permite estimar a curva de sensibilidade da carga frente à ocorrência de afundamentos de tensão, a partir de medições realizadas na rede de transmissão e levando em conta a propagação do distúrbio através de transformadores com conexão delta-estrela. Finalmente, a metodologia proposta é aplicada em um estudo de caso contemplando o sistema de transmissão de uma importante concessionária de energia elétrica brasileira, através de um projeto de pesquisa e desenvolvimento

Ordered interpersonal synchronisation in ASD children via robots

Children with autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) experience persistent disrupted coordination in interpersonal synchronisation that is thought to be associated with deficits in neural connectivity. Robotic interventions have been explored for use with ASD children worldwide revealing that robots encourage one-to-one social and emotional interactions. However, associations between interpersonal synchronisation and emotional empathy have not yet been directly explored in French and Japanese ASD children when they interact with a human or a robot under analogous experimental conditions. Using the paradigm of actor-perceiver, where the child was the actor and the robot or the human the perceiver, we recorded the autonomic heart rate activation and reported emotional feelings of ASD children in both countries. Japanese and French ASD children showed different interpersonal synchronisation when they interacted with the human perceiver, even though the human was the same in both countries. However, they exhibited similar interpersonal synchronisation when the perceiver was the robot. The findings suggest that the mechanism combining interpersonal synchronisation and emotional empathy might be weakened but not absent in ASD children and that both French and Japanese ASD children do spontaneously and unconsciously discern non verbal actions of non human partners through a direct matching process that occurs via automatic mapping

Influence of oxygen in inflation gas during lung ischemia on ischemia-reperfusion injury

AbstractObjectives: Previous studies have reported that hyperinflation during lung ischemia improves pulmonary function after reperfusion. However, it has not been clarified whether hyperinflation itself or oxygen in inflation gas causes good pulmonary function. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of oxygen in pulmonary inflation gas during lung ischemia on ischemia-reperfusion injury. Methods: Twenty-one mongrel dogs were randomly divided into three groups: the lung during a 90-minute period of warm ischemia was inflated to 30 cm H2O with 100% oxygen in group A and 100% nitrogen in group B; it was not inflated in group C. Pulmonary function and hemodynamics were measured before ischemia and 1,2, and 3 hours after reperfusion. Total protein and phosphorous of phospholipid in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid were measured 210 minutes after reperfusion. Results: No significant differences in pulmonary function and hemodynamics were noted between group A and group B, but these two groups had significantly better pulmonary function and hemodynamics than group C. No significant differences were detected in the concentrations of total protein and phosphorus of phospholipids in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and in adenine nucleotide levels of lung tissue after reperfusion among the three groups. Conclusions: The results indicate that pulmonary inflation during warm ischemia improves pulmonary function and hemodynamics after reperfusion in this model. The effect is caused by inflation itself and is not due to oxygen as a metabolic substrate during warm ischemia. (J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg 1997;114: 332-8

The Origin of the Charge Ordering and Its Relevance to Superconductivity in θ\theta-(BEDT-TTF)2_2X: The Effect of the Fermi Surface Nesting and the Distant Electron-Electron Interactions

The origin of the charge ordering in organic compounds $\theta$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2 X$ ($X=MM'$(SCN)$_4$, $M=$Tl,Rb,Co, $M'=$Cs,Zn) is studied using an extended Hubbard model. Calculating the charge susceptibility within random phase approximation (RPA), we find that the $(3\times 3)\sim (3\times 4)$ charge ordering observed at relatively high temperatures can be considered as a consequence of a cooperation between the Fermi surface nesting, controlled by the hopping integral in the $c$ direction, and the electron-electron interactions, where the distant (next nearest neighbor) interactions that have not been taken into account in most of the previous studies play an important role.Mean field analysis at T=0 also supports the RPA results, and further shows that in the $3\times 3$ charge ordered state, some portions of the Fermi surface remain ungapped and are nested with a nesting vector close to the modulation wave vector of the horizontal stripe ordering observed at low temperatures in $X=MM'$(SCN)$_4$. We further study the possibility of superconductivity by taking into account the distant off-site repulsions and the band structure corresponding to $X=$I$_3$, in which superconductivity is experimentally observed. We find that there is a close competition between $d_{xy}$-wave-like singlet pairing and $p_{x+2y}$-wave-like triplet pairing due to a cooperation between the charge and the spin fluctuations. The present analysis provides a possible unified understanding of the experimental phase diagram of the $\theta$-(BEDT-TTF)$_2 X$ family, ranging from a charge ordered insulator to a superconductor.Comment: 13 pages, 18 figures (Figs.5,6,7,14,15,18 compressed using jpeg2ps

High molecular weight amyloid β1-42 oligomers induce neurotoxicity via plasma membrane damage.

Amyloid β-protein (Aβ) molecules tend to aggregate and subsequently form low MW (LMW) oligomers, high MW (HMW) aggregates such as protofibrils, and ultimately fibrils. These Aβ species can generally form amyloid plaques implicated in the neurodegeneration of Alzheimer disease (AD), but therapies designed to reduce plaque load have not demonstrated clinical efficacy. Recent evidence implicates amyloid oligomers in AD neuropathology, but the precise mechanisms are uncertain. We examined the mechanisms of neuronal dysfunction from HMW-Aβ1-42 exposure by measuring membrane integrity, reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, membrane lipid peroxidation, membrane fluidity, intracellular calcium regulation, passive membrane electrophysiological properties, and long-term potentiation (LTP). HMW-Aβ1-42 disturbed membrane integrity by inducing ROS generation and lipid peroxidation, resulting in decreased membrane fluidity, intracellular calcium dysregulation, depolarization, and impaired LTP. The damaging effects of HMW-Aβ1-42 were significantly greater than those of LMW-Aβ1-42. Therapeutic reduction of HMW-Aβ1-42 may prevent AD progression by ameliorating direct neuronal membrane damage.-Yasumoto, T., Takamura, Y., Tsuji, M., Watanabe-Nakayama, T., Imamura, K., Inoue, H., Nakamura, S., Inoue, T., Kimura, A., Yano, S., Nishijo, H., Kiuchi, Y., Teplow, D. B., Ono, K. High molecular weight amyloid β1-42 oligomers induce neurotoxicity via plasma membrane damage

Effects of ML-236B (compactin) on sterol synthesis and low density lipoprotein receptor activities in fibroblasts of patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia

金沢大学大学院医学系研究科　We studied biochemical genetics of low density lipoprotein (LDL) receptor mutations in fibroblasts from six homozygous and five heterozygous patients with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). Three of six homozygotes are receptor-negative type and the other three homozygotes are receptor-defective type. In the cells from three receptor-negative homozygotes, the receptor binding, internalization, and degradation of 125I-LDL were 0.5 ± 0.3 ng/mg protein (mean ± SEM), 14 ± 8 and 8 ± 6 ng/mg protein per 6 h (four normal cells; 44 ± 3, 386 ± 32, and 1,335 ± 214 ng/mg protein per 6 h), respectively. In the cells from three receptor-defective homozygotes, the receptor binding, internalization, and degradation of 12:5I-LDL were 6 ± 2, 29 ± 8, and 90 ± 32 ng/mg protein per 6 h, respectively. In these six homozygotes, two pairs of siblings are included. Two siblings in the same family were classified as receptor-negative and two siblings in another family were classified as receptor-defective. The receptor-negative phenotypes and the receptor-defective phenotypes bred true in individual families. The cells from five heterozygotes showed ~46% of the normal activities of receptor. ML-236B, competitive inhibitor of 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl coenzyme A reductase (HMG-CoA reductase), completely inhibited the incorporation of [14C]acetate into digitonin-precipitable sterols in fibroblasts from normal subjects and heterozygous and homozygous patients with FH with the concentration of 0.5 μg/ml. However, at 0.05 μg/ml of ML-236 B sterol synthesis in fibroblasts from homozygotes was not completely suppressed in contrast to normal and heterozygous cells. Moreover, after preincubation with 0.05 μg/ml of ML-236B for 24 h in medium containing lipoproteins, sterol synthesis in the cells from receptor-negative homozygote showed 75% of the initial activity compared with that of 25% without preincubation. In the cells from a normal subject and heterozygote, sterol synthesis was inhibited even after preincubation. These results suggest that (a) the inhibitory effect of ML-236B is overcome in homozygote cells by their high intracellular levels of HMG-CoA reductase and (b) that a higher dose of ML-236B may be required to lower serum cholesterol levels in FH homozygotes than in heterozygotes

Application of Elliptic Toothed Wheel to Yarn Twisting Machine

Abstract　In this paper we present a practical application of the elliptical toothed wheel. The elliptical toothed wheels are applied to a spining machine as the reciprocating mechanism, and to yarn twisting machine as the mechanism of changing speed. A remarkable improvement of the efficiency of production has been made possible when compared with the convensional mechanism.　概要　　普通撚糸機におけるボビンに糸を巻く装置には，糸道ガイトのあるトラバースバーの往復運動機構として，確動カムが使われている。しかし，このカムの制作および調整が容易ではない。また，飾り撚糸機の芯糸の送り速度の変換機構として，クラッチあるいはレバーを採用しているが，前者によって制作された飾り撚糸にはその断面形状に欠陥があり，後者の場合には，その装置の構造が複雑となり，故障が生じ易く，調整，保守が容易ではない。そのため，それらの生産能率を著しく阻害しているのが現状である。　　これらの欠陥を解決し，生産能率を向上させるため，著者らはこれら撚糸機の往復運動機構にだ円系歯車を応用し，簡単な構造で，調整も容易な装置を開発することができ，著しい効果を得た。　　使用しただ円系歯車はモジュール2，歯数57，離心率0.362であり，これを普通撚糸機には1対，飾り撚糸機には3対をそれぞれ装着した