Delin and Delog codes for graphic representation of gamma ray spectra

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Travesi, A.; Romero, L.

1983-01-01

Two FORTRAN IV Codes have been developed for graphic representation of the gamma-ray spectra obtained with GeLi detectors and multichannel analyzers. The graphic plotting is carried out with the H.P. Graphic Plotter Mod HP-7221 A, using the graphic package software GRAPHICS-1000 from Hewlett-Packard. The codes have a great versatility and the representation of gamma spectra can be done in a lineal, semilog, or log-log scale, as desired. The gamma ray spectra data are fed into the computer through magnetic tape or perforated paper tape. The different output options and complementary data are given in a conversational way through a terminal with TV display. Among the options that can be selected by the user are the following: 1) smoothing the spectra; 2) drawing the spectra point by point or continuous; 3) output drawing in 1, 2 or 4 sheets with automatic division of the energy scale; 4) overlapping of selected spectra regions in γ-scale ampliation with automatic printout of the region limits and ampliation factor; 5) printing spectra data and identifications of selected photopeaks. The codes can be employed with any computer using printing devices, HP-GRAPHICS 1000 software compatible, but are easily modified for another printing software since their modular structure with FORTRAN IV written subroutines. (author)

DELIN and DELOG codes for graphic representation of gamma ray spectra

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Romero, L.; Travesi, A.

1983-01-01

Two Fortran IV Codes has been developed for graphic representation of the gamma-ray spectra obtained with Ge Li detectors and multichannel analyzers. The grafic plotting es carried out with the H.P. Graphic Plotter Mod HP-7221 A, using the graphic package software GRAPHICS-1000 from Hewlett-Packard. The codes have a great versatility and the representation of gamma spectra can ba done in a lineal, semi log, or log-log scale, as desired. The gamma ray spectra data are feed into the computer through magnetic tape or perfored paper tape. The different out-put options and complementary data are given in a conversational way through a terminal with T.V. displays. Among the options that can be selected by the user are the following: - smoothing the spectra - drawing the spectra point by point or continuous - out-put drawing an 1, 2, or 4 sheet with automatic division of the energy scale. - overlapping of selected spectra regions in Y scale ampliation with automatic print-out of the region limits and ampliation factor. - Printing spectra data and identifications of selected photo peaks. The codes can be employed with any computer using printing devices, HP-Graphics 1000 software compatible, but are easily modified for another printing software since their modular structure with Fortran IV written

MKENO-DAR: a direct angular representation Monte Carlo code for criticality safety analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Naito, Yoshitaka; Komuro, Yuichi; Tsunoo, Yukiyasu; Nakayama, Mitsuo.

1984-03-01

Improving the Monte Carlo code MULTI-KENO, the MKENO-DAR (Direct Angular Representation) code has been developed for criticality safety analysis in detail. A function was added to MULTI-KENO for representing anisotropic scattering strictly. With this function, the scattering angle of neutron is determined not by the average scattering angle μ-bar of the Pl Legendre polynomial but by the random work operation using probability distribution function produced with the higher order Legendre polynomials. This code is avilable for the FACOM-M380 computer. This report is a computer code manual for MKENO-DAR. (author)

Efficient coding of spectrotemporal binaural sounds leads to emergence of the auditory space representation

Science.gov (United States)

Młynarski, Wiktor

2014-01-01

To date a number of studies have shown that receptive field shapes of early sensory neurons can be reproduced by optimizing coding efficiency of natural stimulus ensembles. A still unresolved question is whether the efficient coding hypothesis explains formation of neurons which explicitly represent environmental features of different functional importance. This paper proposes that the spatial selectivity of higher auditory neurons emerges as a direct consequence of learning efficient codes for natural binaural sounds. Firstly, it is demonstrated that a linear efficient coding transform—Independent Component Analysis (ICA) trained on spectrograms of naturalistic simulated binaural sounds extracts spatial information present in the signal. A simple hierarchical ICA extension allowing for decoding of sound position is proposed. Furthermore, it is shown that units revealing spatial selectivity can be learned from a binaural recording of a natural auditory scene. In both cases a relatively small subpopulation of learned spectrogram features suffices to perform accurate sound localization. Representation of the auditory space is therefore learned in a purely unsupervised way by maximizing the coding efficiency and without any task-specific constraints. This results imply that efficient coding is a useful strategy for learning structures which allow for making behaviorally vital inferences about the environment. PMID:24639644

Efficient coding of spectrotemporal binaural sounds leads to emergence of the auditory space representation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wiktor eMlynarski

2014-03-01

Full Text Available To date a number of studies have shown that receptive field shapes of early sensory neurons can be reproduced by optimizing coding efficiency of natural stimulus ensembles. A still unresolved question is whether the efficientcoding hypothesis explains formation of neurons which explicitly represent environmental features of different functional importance. This paper proposes that the spatial selectivity of higher auditory neurons emerges as a direct consequence of learning efficient codes for natural binaural sounds. Firstly, it is demonstrated that a linear efficient coding transform - Independent Component Analysis (ICA trained on spectrograms of naturalistic simulated binaural sounds extracts spatial information present in the signal. A simple hierarchical ICA extension allowing for decoding of sound position is proposed. Furthermore, it is shown that units revealing spatial selectivity can be learned from a binaural recording of a natural auditory scene. In both cases a relatively small subpopulation of learned spectrogram features suffices to perform accurate sound localization. Representation of the auditory space is therefore learned in a purely unsupervised way by maximizing the coding efficiency and without any task-specific constraints. This results imply that efficient coding is a useful strategy for learning structures which allow for making behaviorally vital inferences about the environment.

Low-frequency coding variants in CETP and CFB are associated with susceptibility of exudative age-related macular degeneration in the Japanese population.

Science.gov (United States)

Momozawa, Yukihide; Akiyama, Masato; Kamatani, Yoichiro; Arakawa, Satoshi; Yasuda, Miho; Yoshida, Shigeo; Oshima, Yuji; Mori, Ryusaburo; Tanaka, Koji; Mori, Keisuke; Inoue, Satoshi; Terasaki, Hiroko; Yasuma, Tetsuhiro; Honda, Shigeru; Miki, Akiko; Inoue, Maiko; Fujisawa, Kimihiko; Takahashi, Kanji; Yasukawa, Tsutomu; Yanagi, Yasuo; Kadonosono, Kazuaki; Sonoda, Koh-Hei; Ishibashi, Tatsuro; Takahashi, Atsushi; Kubo, Michiaki

2016-11-15

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is a major cause of blindness in the elderly. Previous sequencing studies of AMD susceptibility genes have revealed the association of rare coding variants in CFH, CFI, C3 and C9 in European population; however, the impact of rare or low-frequency coding variants on AMD susceptibility in other populations is largely unknown. To identify the role of low-frequency coding variants on exudative AMD susceptibility in a Japanese population, we analysed the association of coding variants of 34 AMD candidate genes in the two-stage design by a multiplex PCR-based target sequencing method. We used a total of 2,886 (1st: 827, 2nd: 2,059) exudative AMD cases including typical AMD, polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy, and retinal angiomatous proliferation and 9,337 (1st: 3,247 2nd: 6,090) controls. Gene-based analysis found a significant association of low-frequency variants (minor allele frequency (MAF) low-frequency variant (R74H) in CFB would be individually associated with AMD susceptibility independent of the GWAS associated SNP. These findings highlight the importance of target sequencing to reveal the impact of rare or low-frequency coding variants on disease susceptibility in different ethnic populations.

Asymmetric coding of categorical spatial relations in both language and vision.

Science.gov (United States)

Roth, J C; Franconeri, S L

2012-01-01

Describing certain types of spatial relationships between a pair of objects requires that the objects are assigned different "roles" in the relation, e.g., "A is above B" is different than "B is above A." This asymmetric representation places one object in the "target" or "figure" role and the other in the "reference" or "ground" role. Here we provide evidence that this asymmetry may be present not just in spatial language, but also in perceptual representations. More specifically, we describe a model of visual spatial relationship judgment where the designation of the target object within such a spatial relationship is guided by the location of the "spotlight" of attention. To demonstrate the existence of this perceptual asymmetry, we cued attention to one object within a pair by briefly previewing it, and showed that participants were faster to verify the depicted relation when that object was the linguistic target. Experiment 1 demonstrated this effect for left-right relations, and Experiment 2 for above-below relations. These results join several other types of demonstrations in suggesting that perceptual representations of some spatial relations may be asymmetrically coded, and further suggest that the location of selective attention may serve as the mechanism that guides this asymmetry.

Asymmetric coding of categorical spatial relations in both language and vision.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jessica eRoth

2012-11-01

Full Text Available Describing certain types of spatial relationships between a pair of objects requires that the objects are assigned different ‘roles’ in the relation, e.g. ‘A is above B’ is different than ‘B is above A’. This asymmetric representation places one object in the ‘target’ or ‘figure’ role and the other in the ‘reference’ or ‘ground’ role. Here we provide evidence that this asymmetry may be present not just in spatial language, but also in perceptual representations. More specifically, we describe a model of visual spatial relationship judgment where the designation of the target object within such a spatial relationship is guided by the location of the ‘spotlight’ of attention. To demonstrate the existence of this perceptual asymmetry, we cued attention to one object within a pair by briefly previewing it, and showed that participants were faster to verify the depicted relation when that object was the linguistic target. Experiment 1 demonstrated this effect for left-right relations, and Experiment 2 for above-below relations. These results join several other types of demonstrations in suggesting that perceptual representations of some spatial relations may be asymmetrically coded, and further suggest that the location of selective attention may serve as the mechanism that guides this asymmetry.

Representation sociale de l'hygiene chez les populations riveraines ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Mots clés: Représentation sociale, hygiène, populations riveraines, décharge, environnement, pollution. English Title: Social representation of hygiene in the populations living in the vicinity of Akouedo-Cocody dump (Abidjan-Ivory Coast). English Abstract. Landfills are generally the common option for the final deposit of ...

Competition and Cooperation among Relational Memory Representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Schwarb, Hillary; Watson, Patrick D; Campbell, Kelsey; Shander, Christopher L; Monti, Jim M; Cooke, Gillian E; Wang, Jane X; Kramer, Arthur F; Cohen, Neal J

2015-01-01

Mnemonic processing engages multiple systems that cooperate and compete to support task performance. Exploring these systems' interaction requires memory tasks that produce rich data with multiple patterns of performance sensitive to different processing sub-components. Here we present a novel context-dependent relational memory paradigm designed to engage multiple learning and memory systems. In this task, participants learned unique face-room associations in two distinct contexts (i.e., different colored buildings). Faces occupied rooms as determined by an implicit gender-by-side rule structure (e.g., male faces on the left and female faces on the right) and all faces were seen in both contexts. In two experiments, we use behavioral and eye-tracking measures to investigate interactions among different memory representations in both younger and older adult populations; furthermore we link these representations to volumetric variations in hippocampus and ventromedial PFC among older adults. Overall, performance was very accurate. Successful face placement into a studied room systematically varied with hippocampal volume. Selecting the studied room in the wrong context was the most typical error. The proportion of these errors to correct responses positively correlated with ventromedial prefrontal volume. This novel task provides a powerful tool for investigating both the unique and interacting contributions of these systems in support of relational memory.

Representations of Lie algebras and partial differential equations

CERN Document Server

Xu, Xiaoping

2017-01-01

This book provides explicit representations of finite-dimensional simple Lie algebras, related partial differential equations, linear orthogonal algebraic codes, combinatorics and algebraic varieties, summarizing the author’s works and his joint works with his former students.  Further, it presents various oscillator generalizations of the classical representation theorem on harmonic polynomials, and highlights new functors from the representation category of a simple Lie algebra to that of another simple Lie algebra. Partial differential equations play a key role in solving certain representation problems. The weight matrices of the minimal and adjoint representations over the simple Lie algebras of types E and F are proved to generate ternary orthogonal linear codes with large minimal distances. New multi-variable hypergeometric functions related to the root systems of simple Lie algebras are introduced in connection with quantum many-body systems in one dimension. In addition, the book identifies certai...

Narcissism and relational representations among psychiatric outpatients.

Science.gov (United States)

Kealy, David; Ogrodniczuk, John S; Joyce, Anthony S; Steinberg, Paul I; Piper, William E

2015-06-01

Pathological narcissism is associated with maladaptive interpersonal behavior, although less is known regarding the internal relational representations of narcissistic patients. The authors examined the relationship between pathological narcissism and two constructs that reflect internal representations of relational patterns: quality of object relations and attachment style. Patients attending a psychiatric day treatment program (N = 218) completed measures of narcissism, general psychiatric distress, and attachment style in terms of attachment avoidance and anxiety. A semistructured interview was used to assess quality of object relations. Multiple regression analysis was conducted, controlling for general psychiatric distress. Pathological narcissism was associated with anxious attachment, but not with avoidant attachment. Narcissism was also associated with lower levels of quality of object relations. The implications of these results are discussed in terms of internal representations of self-other relations.

Spatial attention improves the quality of population codes in human visual cortex.

Science.gov (United States)

Saproo, Sameer; Serences, John T

2010-08-01

Selective attention enables sensory input from behaviorally relevant stimuli to be processed in greater detail, so that these stimuli can more accurately influence thoughts, actions, and future goals. Attention has been shown to modulate the spiking activity of single feature-selective neurons that encode basic stimulus properties (color, orientation, etc.). However, the combined output from many such neurons is required to form stable representations of relevant objects and little empirical work has formally investigated the relationship between attentional modulations on population responses and improvements in encoding precision. Here, we used functional MRI and voxel-based feature tuning functions to show that spatial attention induces a multiplicative scaling in orientation-selective population response profiles in early visual cortex. In turn, this multiplicative scaling correlates with an improvement in encoding precision, as evidenced by a concurrent increase in the mutual information between population responses and the orientation of attended stimuli. These data therefore demonstrate how multiplicative scaling of neural responses provides at least one mechanism by which spatial attention may improve the encoding precision of population codes. Increased encoding precision in early visual areas may then enhance the speed and accuracy of perceptual decisions computed by higher-order neural mechanisms.

Mental disability and discriminatory practices: effects of social representations of the Mexican population.

Science.gov (United States)

Mariana, Espinola-Nadurille; Guadalupe, Delgado

2009-05-01

The prevalence of mental disorders in Mexico is 26.1%. This shows that an important percentage of the population suffers from mental disability. Despite this the country's healthcare system does not provide the least acceptable standard of care for the mentally disabled. The aim of this study was to describe the general population's social representations of the disabled and analyze their relationship with the discriminatory practices from the state towards the mentally ill with respect to their right to health. This study was a secondary analysis of the First National Survey on Discrimination in Mexico. In the survey 1,437 effective interviews that comprised a representative sample, were obtained from people aged 18 to 60 living in rural and urban settings. The response rate was 76.5%. The assessment tool was a self-administered questionnaire that yielded perceptions, attitudes, values and social representations about discrimination towards groups of people that supposedly were targets of discrimination by the general population. In the survey the mentally ill were included under disability. As a secondary analysis of the survey for the purpose of this study, we selected a subset of questions that provided important information about social representations of the general Mexican population towards persons with disabilities. The general population's social representations of the disabled were analyzed. The disabled are the second group after the elderly perceived as the most discriminated and neglected and bearing more suffering. A whole set of negative representations concerning the disabled, such as lack of acceptance and respect, low self-confidence, mistreatment, incomprehension, isolation, intolerance, indifference and bad attitudes from others, were elicited. Social representations are social correspondents of the discriminatory practices that the state exerts toward the mentally ill with respect to their right to health. These representations serve to

Z₂-double cyclic codes

OpenAIRE

Borges, J.

2014-01-01

A binary linear code C is a Z2-double cyclic code if the set of coordinates can be partitioned into two subsets such that any cyclic shift of the coordinates of both subsets leaves invariant the code. These codes can be identified as submodules of the Z2[x]-module Z2[x]/(x^r − 1) × Z2[x]/(x^s − 1). We determine the structure of Z2-double cyclic codes giving the generator polynomials of these codes. The related polynomial representation of Z2-double cyclic codes and its duals, and the relation...

Doctor, Teacher, and Stethoscope: Neural Representation of Different Types of Semantic Relations.

Science.gov (United States)

Xu, Yangwen; Wang, Xiaosha; Wang, Xiaoying; Men, Weiwei; Gao, Jia-Hong; Bi, Yanchao

2018-03-28

Concepts can be related in many ways. They can belong to the same taxonomic category (e.g., "doctor" and "teacher," both in the category of people) or be associated with the same event context (e.g., "doctor" and "stethoscope," both associated with medical scenarios). How are these two major types of semantic relations coded in the brain? We constructed stimuli from three taxonomic categories (people, manmade objects, and locations) and three thematic categories (school, medicine, and sports) and investigated the neural representations of these two dimensions using representational similarity analyses in human participants (10 men and nine women). In specific regions of interest, the left anterior temporal lobe (ATL) and the left temporoparietal junction (TPJ), we found that, whereas both areas had significant effects of taxonomic information, the taxonomic relations had stronger effects in the ATL than in the TPJ ("doctor" and "teacher" closer in ATL neural activity), with the reverse being true for thematic relations ("doctor" and "stethoscope" closer in TPJ neural activity). A whole-brain searchlight analysis revealed that widely distributed regions, mainly in the left hemisphere, represented the taxonomic dimension. Interestingly, the significant effects of the thematic relations were only observed after the taxonomic differences were controlled for in the left TPJ, the right superior lateral occipital cortex, and other frontal, temporal, and parietal regions. In summary, taxonomic grouping is a primary organizational dimension across distributed brain regions, with thematic grouping further embedded within such taxonomic structures. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT How are concepts organized in the brain? It is well established that concepts belonging to the same taxonomic categories (e.g., "doctor" and "teacher") share neural representations in specific brain regions. How concepts are associated in other manners (e.g., "doctor" and "stethoscope," which are thematically

Coding completeness and quality of relative survival-related variables in the National Program of Cancer Registries Cancer Surveillance System, 1995-2008.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilson, Reda J; O'Neil, M E; Ntekop, E; Zhang, Kevin; Ren, Y

2014-01-01

Calculating accurate estimates of cancer survival is important for various analyses of cancer patient care and prognosis. Current US survival rates are estimated based on data from the National Cancer Institute's (NCI's) Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End RESULTS (SEER) program, covering approximately 28 percent of the US population. The National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) covers about 96 percent of the US population. Using a population-based database with greater US population coverage to calculate survival rates at the national, state, and regional levels can further enhance the effective monitoring of cancer patient care and prognosis in the United States. The first step is to establish the coding completeness and coding quality of the NPCR data needed for calculating survival rates and conducting related validation analyses. Using data from the NPCR-Cancer Surveillance System (CSS) from 1995 through 2008, we assessed coding completeness and quality on 26 data elements that are needed to calculate cancer relative survival estimates and conduct related analyses. Data elements evaluated consisted of demographic, follow-up, prognostic, and cancer identification variables. Analyses were performed showing trends of these variables by diagnostic year, state of residence at diagnosis, and cancer site. Mean overall percent coding completeness by each NPCR central cancer registry averaged across all data elements and diagnosis years ranged from 92.3 percent to 100 percent. RESULTS showing the mean percent coding completeness for the relative survival-related variables in NPCR data are presented. All data elements but 1 have a mean coding completeness greater than 90 percent as was the mean completeness by data item group type. Statistically significant differences in coding completeness were found in the ICD revision number, cause of death, vital status, and date of last contact variables when comparing diagnosis years. The majority of data items had a coding

Coding Teaching for Simultaneity and Connections: Examining Teachers' Part-Whole Additive Relations Instruction

Science.gov (United States)

Ekdahl, Anna-Lena; Venkat, Hamsa; Runesson, Ulla

2016-01-01

In this article, we present a coding framework based on simultaneity and connections. The coding focuses on microlevel attention to three aspects of simultaneity and connections: between representations, within examples, and between examples. Criteria for coding that we viewed as mathematically important within part-whole additive relations…

Decoding the dynamic representation of musical pitch from human brain activity.

Science.gov (United States)

Sankaran, N; Thompson, W F; Carlile, S; Carlson, T A

2018-01-16

In music, the perception of pitch is governed largely by its tonal function given the preceding harmonic structure of the music. While behavioral research has advanced our understanding of the perceptual representation of musical pitch, relatively little is known about its representational structure in the brain. Using Magnetoencephalography (MEG), we recorded evoked neural responses to different tones presented within a tonal context. Multivariate Pattern Analysis (MVPA) was applied to "decode" the stimulus that listeners heard based on the underlying neural activity. We then characterized the structure of the brain's representation using decoding accuracy as a proxy for representational distance, and compared this structure to several well established perceptual and acoustic models. The observed neural representation was best accounted for by a model based on the Standard Tonal Hierarchy, whereby differences in the neural encoding of musical pitches correspond to their differences in perceived stability. By confirming that perceptual differences honor those in the underlying neuronal population coding, our results provide a crucial link in understanding the cognitive foundations of musical pitch across psychological and neural domains.

Introduction to computer data representation

CERN Document Server

Fenwick, Peter

2014-01-01

Introduction to Computer Data Representation introduces readers to the representation of data within computers. Starting from basic principles of number representation in computers, the book covers the representation of both integer and floating point numbers, and characters or text. It comprehensively explains the main techniques of computer arithmetic and logical manipulation. The book also features chapters covering the less usual topics of basic checksums and 'universal' or variable length representations for integers, with additional coverage of Gray Codes, BCD codes and logarithmic repre

Population coding in sparsely connected networks of noisy neurons

OpenAIRE

Tripp, Bryan P.; Orchard, Jeff

2012-01-01

This study examines the relationship between population coding and spatial connection statistics in networks of noisy neurons. Encoding of sensory information in the neocortex is thought to require coordinated neural populations, because individual cortical neurons respond to a wide range of stimuli, and exhibit highly variable spiking in response to repeated stimuli. Population coding is rooted in network structure, because cortical neurons receive information only from other neurons, and be...

Relational versus absolute representation in categorization.

Science.gov (United States)

Edwards, Darren J; Pothos, Emmanuel M; Perlman, Amotz

2012-01-01

This study explores relational-like and absolute-like representations in categorization. Although there is much evidence that categorization processes can involve information about both the particular physical properties of studied instances and abstract (relational) properties, there has been little work on the factors that lead to one kind of representation as opposed to the other. We tested 370 participants in 6 experiments, in which participants had to classify new items into predefined artificial categories. In 4 experiments, we observed a predominantly relational-like mode of classification, and in 2 experiments we observed a shift toward an absolute-like mode of classification. These results suggest 3 factors that promote a relational-like mode of classification: fewer items per group, more training groups, and the presence of a time delay. Overall, we propose that less information about the distributional properties of a category or weaker memory traces for the category exemplars (induced, e.g., by having smaller categories or a time delay) can encourage relational-like categorization.

PopCORN: Hunting down the differences between binary population synthesis codes

Science.gov (United States)

Toonen, S.; Claeys, J. S. W.; Mennekens, N.; Ruiter, A. J.

2014-02-01

Context. Binary population synthesis (BPS) modelling is a very effective tool to study the evolution and properties of various types of close binary systems. The uncertainty in the parameters of the model and their effect on a population can be tested in a statistical way, which then leads to a deeper understanding of the underlying (sometimes poorly understood) physical processes involved. Several BPS codes exist that have been developed with different philosophies and aims. Although BPS has been very successful for studies of many populations of binary stars, in the particular case of the study of the progenitors of supernovae Type Ia, the predicted rates and ZAMS progenitors vary substantially between different BPS codes. Aims: To understand the predictive power of BPS codes, we study the similarities and differences in the predictions of four different BPS codes for low- and intermediate-mass binaries. We investigate the differences in the characteristics of the predicted populations, and whether they are caused by different assumptions made in the BPS codes or by numerical effects, e.g. a lack of accuracy in BPS codes. Methods: We compare a large number of evolutionary sequences for binary stars, starting with the same initial conditions following the evolution until the first (and when applicable, the second) white dwarf (WD) is formed. To simplify the complex problem of comparing BPS codes that are based on many (often different) assumptions, we equalise the assumptions as much as possible to examine the inherent differences of the four BPS codes. Results: We find that the simulated populations are similar between the codes. Regarding the population of binaries with one WD, there is very good agreement between the physical characteristics, the evolutionary channels that lead to the birth of these systems, and their birthrates. Regarding the double WD population, there is a good agreement on which evolutionary channels exist to create double WDs and a rough

Short-Block Protograph-Based LDPC Codes

Science.gov (United States)

Divsalar, Dariush; Dolinar, Samuel; Jones, Christopher

2010-01-01

Short-block low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes of a special type are intended to be especially well suited for potential applications that include transmission of command and control data, cellular telephony, data communications in wireless local area networks, and satellite data communications. [In general, LDPC codes belong to a class of error-correcting codes suitable for use in a variety of wireless data-communication systems that include noisy channels.] The codes of the present special type exhibit low error floors, low bit and frame error rates, and low latency (in comparison with related prior codes). These codes also achieve low maximum rate of undetected errors over all signal-to-noise ratios, without requiring the use of cyclic redundancy checks, which would significantly increase the overhead for short blocks. These codes have protograph representations; this is advantageous in that, for reasons that exceed the scope of this article, the applicability of protograph representations makes it possible to design highspeed iterative decoders that utilize belief- propagation algorithms.

Dual coding: a cognitive model for psychoanalytic research.

Science.gov (United States)

Bucci, W

1985-01-01

Four theories of mental representation derived from current experimental work in cognitive psychology have been discussed in relation to psychoanalytic theory. These are: verbal mediation theory, in which language determines or mediates thought; perceptual dominance theory, in which imagistic structures are dominant; common code or propositional models, in which all information, perceptual or linguistic, is represented in an abstract, amodal code; and dual coding, in which nonverbal and verbal information are each encoded, in symbolic form, in separate systems specialized for such representation, and connected by a complex system of referential relations. The weight of current empirical evidence supports the dual code theory. However, psychoanalysis has implicitly accepted a mixed model-perceptual dominance theory applying to unconscious representation, and verbal mediation characterizing mature conscious waking thought. The characterization of psychoanalysis, by Schafer, Spence, and others, as a domain in which reality is constructed rather than discovered, reflects the application of this incomplete mixed model. The representations of experience in the patient's mind are seen as without structure of their own, needing to be organized by words, thus vulnerable to distortion or dissolution by the language of the analyst or the patient himself. In these terms, hypothesis testing becomes a meaningless pursuit; the propositions of the theory are no longer falsifiable; the analyst is always more or less "right." This paper suggests that the integrated dual code formulation provides a more coherent theoretical framework for psychoanalysis than the mixed model, with important implications for theory and technique. In terms of dual coding, the problem is not that the nonverbal representations are vulnerable to distortion by words, but that the words that pass back and forth between analyst and patient will not affect the nonverbal schemata at all. Using the dual code

Population coding in sparsely connected networks of noisy neurons.

Science.gov (United States)

Tripp, Bryan P; Orchard, Jeff

2012-01-01

This study examines the relationship between population coding and spatial connection statistics in networks of noisy neurons. Encoding of sensory information in the neocortex is thought to require coordinated neural populations, because individual cortical neurons respond to a wide range of stimuli, and exhibit highly variable spiking in response to repeated stimuli. Population coding is rooted in network structure, because cortical neurons receive information only from other neurons, and because the information they encode must be decoded by other neurons, if it is to affect behavior. However, population coding theory has often ignored network structure, or assumed discrete, fully connected populations (in contrast with the sparsely connected, continuous sheet of the cortex). In this study, we modeled a sheet of cortical neurons with sparse, primarily local connections, and found that a network with this structure could encode multiple internal state variables with high signal-to-noise ratio. However, we were unable to create high-fidelity networks by instantiating connections at random according to spatial connection probabilities. In our models, high-fidelity networks required additional structure, with higher cluster factors and correlations between the inputs to nearby neurons.

Population Coding in Sparsely Connected Networks of Noisy Neurons

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bryan Patrick Tripp

2012-05-01

Full Text Available This study examines the relationship between population coding and spatial connection statistics in networks of noisy neurons. Encoding of sensory information in the neocortex is thought to require coordinated neural populations, because individual cortical neurons respond to a wide range of stimuli, and exhibit highly variable spiking in response to repeated stimuli. Population coding is rooted in network structure, because cortical neurons receive information only from other neurons, and because the information they encode must be decoded by other neurons, if it is to affect behaviour. However, population coding theory has often ignored network structure, or assumed discrete, fully-connected populations (in contrast with the sparsely connected, continuous sheet of the cortex. In this study, we model a sheet of cortical neurons with sparse, primarily local connections, and find that a network with this structure can encode multiple internal state variables with high signal-to-noise ratio. However, in our model, although connection probability varies with the distance between neurons, we find that the connections cannot be instantiated at random according to these probabilities, but must have additional structure if information is to be encoded with high fidelity.

[Social and cultural representations in epilepsy awareness].

Science.gov (United States)

Arborio, Sophie

2015-01-01

Representations relating to epilepsy have evolved over the centuries, but the manifestations of epilepsy awaken archaic images linked to death, violence and disgust. Indeed, the generalised epileptic seizure symbolises a rupture with the surrounding environment, "informs it", through the loss of social codes which it causes. The social and cultural context, as well as medical knowledge, influences the representations of the disease. As a result, popular knowledge is founded on the social and cultural representations of a given era, in a given society. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Neural Population Dynamics during Reaching Are Better Explained by a Dynamical System than Representational Tuning.

Science.gov (United States)

Michaels, Jonathan A; Dann, Benjamin; Scherberger, Hansjörg

2016-11-01

Recent models of movement generation in motor cortex have sought to explain neural activity not as a function of movement parameters, known as representational models, but as a dynamical system acting at the level of the population. Despite evidence supporting this framework, the evaluation of representational models and their integration with dynamical systems is incomplete in the literature. Using a representational velocity-tuning based simulation of center-out reaching, we show that incorporating variable latency offsets between neural activity and kinematics is sufficient to generate rotational dynamics at the level of neural populations, a phenomenon observed in motor cortex. However, we developed a covariance-matched permutation test (CMPT) that reassigns neural data between task conditions independently for each neuron while maintaining overall neuron-to-neuron relationships, revealing that rotations based on the representational model did not uniquely depend on the underlying condition structure. In contrast, rotations based on either a dynamical model or motor cortex data depend on this relationship, providing evidence that the dynamical model more readily explains motor cortex activity. Importantly, implementing a recurrent neural network we demonstrate that both representational tuning properties and rotational dynamics emerge, providing evidence that a dynamical system can reproduce previous findings of representational tuning. Finally, using motor cortex data in combination with the CMPT, we show that results based on small numbers of neurons or conditions should be interpreted cautiously, potentially informing future experimental design. Together, our findings reinforce the view that representational models lack the explanatory power to describe complex aspects of single neuron and population level activity.

Collection of regulatory texts related to radiation protection (collection of legal and regulatory measures related to radiation protection). Part 1: laws and decrees (Extracts of the Public Health Code and of the Labour Code dealing with the protection of population, patients and workers against the hazards of ionizing radiations); Part 2: orders, decisions, non codified decrees (Orders and decisions taken in application of the Public Health Code and of the Labour Code dealing with the protection of population, patients and workers against the hazards of ionizing radiations)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rivas, R.; Saad, N.; Niel, X.; Cottin, V.; Lachaume, J.L.; Feries, J.

2011-01-01

The first part contains legal and regulatory texts extracted from the Public Health Code and related to health general protection and to health products (medical devices), from the Social Security Code, and from the Labour Code related to individual work relationships, to health and safety at work, to work places, to work equipment and means of protection, to the prevention of some exposure risks and of risks related to some activities. The second part gathers texts extracted from the Public Health Code and related to ionizing radiations (general measures for the protection of the population, exposure to natural radiations, general regime of authorizations and declarations, purchase, retailing, importation, exportation, transfer and elimination of radioactive sources, protection of persons exposed to ionizing radiations for medical or forensics purposes, situations of radiological emergency and of sustained exposure to ionizing radiations, control), to the safety of waters and food products, and to the control of medical devices, to the protection of patients. It also contains extracts for the Labour Code related to workers protection

Product information representation for feature conversion and implementation of group technology automated coding

Science.gov (United States)

Medland, A. J.; Zhu, Guowang; Gao, Jian; Sun, Jian

1996-03-01

Feature conversion, also called feature transformation and feature mapping, is defined as the process of converting features from one view of an object to another view of the object. In a relatively simple implementation, for each application the design features are automatically converted into features specific for that application. All modifications have to be made via the design features. This is the approach that has attracted most attention until now. In the ideal situation, however, conversions directly from application views to the design view, and to other applications views, are also possible. In this paper, some difficulties faced in feature conversion are discussed. A new representation scheme of feature-based parts models has been proposed for the purpose of one-way feature conversion. The parts models consist of five different levels of abstraction, extending from an assembly level and its attributes, single parts and their attributes, single features and their attributes, one containing the geometric reference element and finally one for detailed geometry. One implementation of feature conversion for rotational components within GT (Group Technology) has already been undertaken using an automated coding procedure operating on a design-feature database. This database has been generated by a feature-based design system, and the GT coding scheme used in this paper is a specific scheme created for a textile machine manufacturing plant. Such feature conversion techniques presented here are only in their early stages of development and further research is underway.

Orthogonality relations and supercharacter formulas of U(m|n) representations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Alfaro, J.; Medina, R.; Urrutia, L.F.

1997-01-01

In this paper we obtain the orthogonality relations for the supergroup U(m|n), which are remarkably different from the ones for the U(N) case. We extend our results for ordinary representations, obtained some time ago, to the case of complex conjugated and mixed representations. Our results are expressed in terms of the Young tableaux notation for irreducible representations. We use the supersymmetric Harish - Chandra - Itzykson endash Zuber integral and the character expansion technique as mathematical tools for deriving these relations. As a byproduct we also obtain closed expressions for the supercharacters and dimensions of some particular irreducible U(m|n) representations. A new way of labeling the U(m|n) irreducible representations in terms of m+n numbers is proposed. Finally, as a corollary of our results, new identities among the dimensions of the irreducible representations of the unitary group U(N) are presented. copyright 1997 American Institute of Physics

An Improved Real-Coded Population-Based Extremal Optimization Method for Continuous Unconstrained Optimization Problems

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Guo-Qiang Zeng

2014-01-01

Full Text Available As a novel evolutionary optimization method, extremal optimization (EO has been successfully applied to a variety of combinatorial optimization problems. However, the applications of EO in continuous optimization problems are relatively rare. This paper proposes an improved real-coded population-based EO method (IRPEO for continuous unconstrained optimization problems. The key operations of IRPEO include generation of real-coded random initial population, evaluation of individual and population fitness, selection of bad elements according to power-law probability distribution, generation of new population based on uniform random mutation, and updating the population by accepting the new population unconditionally. The experimental results on 10 benchmark test functions with the dimension N=30 have shown that IRPEO is competitive or even better than the recently reported various genetic algorithm (GA versions with different mutation operations in terms of simplicity, effectiveness, and efficiency. Furthermore, the superiority of IRPEO to other evolutionary algorithms such as original population-based EO, particle swarm optimization (PSO, and the hybrid PSO-EO is also demonstrated by the experimental results on some benchmark functions.

Learning connective-based word representations for implicit discourse relation identification

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Braud, Chloé Elodie; Denis, Pascal

2016-01-01

We introduce a simple semi-supervised ap-proach to improve implicit discourse relation identification. This approach harnesses large amounts of automatically extracted discourse connectives along with their arguments to con-struct new distributional word representations. Specifically, we represen...... their simplicity, these connective-based rep-resentations outperform various off-the-shelf word embeddings, and achieve state-of-the-art performance on this problem.......We introduce a simple semi-supervised ap-proach to improve implicit discourse relation identification. This approach harnesses large amounts of automatically extracted discourse connectives along with their arguments to con-struct new distributional word representations. Specifically, we represent...... words in the space of discourse connectives as a way to directly encode their rhetorical function. Experiments on the Penn Discourse Treebank demonstrate the effectiveness of these task-tailored repre-sentations in predicting implicit discourse re-lations. Our results indeed show that, despite...

Demographic Change and Representation by Population in the Canadian House of Commons

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Don Kerr

2010-12-01

delineation of boundaries of federal electoral districts. As argued in this paper,the traditional understandings and agreements that have shaped decisions relating to electoral districts are increasingly at odds with Canada’s emerging demographic realities. In a nation that is highly reliant on immigration in maintaining its population, the current representational order arguably penalizes regions of the country which are growing most rapidly, and in particular, where new immigrants are most likely to locate. The current paper also considers possible reforms in the manner in which electoral districts are drawn, which at a minimum could involve the use of more up to date and accurate demographic data.

MCNP and other nuclear codes output graphical representation using python scripts; Representacion grafica de outputs de MCNP y codigos nucleares mediante el uso de scripts en python

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Cadenas Mendicoa, A. M.

2016-08-01

Due to the lack of graphical representation capability of same nuclear codes like MCNP of GOTHIC, widely used in the industry, the following article describes the development of an interface to use a graphical representation open source (Paraview) with the outputs generated by the nuclear codes. Moreover, this article aims at describing the advantage of this type of visualization programs for the modeling and decision making in the calculation. (Author)

Population coding in mouse visual cortex: response reliability and dissociability of stimulus tuning and noise correlation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jorrit S. Montijn

2014-06-01

Full Text Available The primary visual cortex is an excellent model system for investigating how neuronal populations encode information, because of well-documented relationships between stimulus characteristics and neuronal activation patterns. We used two-photon calcium imaging data to relate the performance of different methods for studying population coding (population vectors, template matching, and Bayesian decoding algorithms to their underlying assumptions. We show that the variability of neuronal responses may hamper the decoding of population activity, and that a normalization to correct for this variability may be of critical importance for correct decoding of population activity. Second, by comparing noise correlations and stimulus tuning we find that these properties have dissociated anatomical correlates, even though noise correlations have been previously hypothesized to reflect common synaptic input. We hypothesize that noise correlations arise from large non-specific increases in spiking activity acting on many weak synapses simultaneously, while neuronal stimulus response properties are dependent on more reliable connections. Finally, this paper provides practical guidelines for further research on population coding and shows that population coding cannot be approximated by a simple summation of inputs, but is heavily influenced by factors such as input reliability and noise correlation structure.

Methods for Coding Tobacco-Related Twitter Data: A Systematic Review.

Science.gov (United States)

Lienemann, Brianna A; Unger, Jennifer B; Cruz, Tess Boley; Chu, Kar-Hai

2017-03-31

As Twitter has grown in popularity to 313 million monthly active users, researchers have increasingly been using it as a data source for tobacco-related research. The objective of this systematic review was to assess the methodological approaches of categorically coded tobacco Twitter data and make recommendations for future studies. Data sources included PsycINFO, Web of Science, PubMed, ABI/INFORM, Communication Source, and Tobacco Regulatory Science. Searches were limited to peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings in English from January 2006 to July 2016. The initial search identified 274 articles using a Twitter keyword and a tobacco keyword. One coder reviewed all abstracts and identified 27 articles that met the following inclusion criteria: (1) original research, (2) focused on tobacco or a tobacco product, (3) analyzed Twitter data, and (4) coded Twitter data categorically. One coder extracted data collection and coding methods. E-cigarettes were the most common type of Twitter data analyzed, followed by specific tobacco campaigns. The most prevalent data sources were Gnip and Twitter's Streaming application programming interface (API). The primary methods of coding were hand-coding and machine learning. The studies predominantly coded for relevance, sentiment, theme, user or account, and location of user. Standards for data collection and coding should be developed to be able to more easily compare and replicate tobacco-related Twitter results. Additional recommendations include the following: sample Twitter's databases multiple times, make a distinction between message attitude and emotional tone for sentiment, code images and URLs, and analyze user profiles. Being relatively novel and widely used among adolescents and black and Hispanic individuals, Twitter could provide a rich source of tobacco surveillance data among vulnerable populations. ©Brianna A Lienemann, Jennifer B Unger, Tess Boley Cruz, Kar-Hai Chu. Originally published in the

Language, Perception, and the Schematic Representation of Spatial Relations

Science.gov (United States)

Amorapanth, Prin; Kranjec, Alexander; Bromberger, Bianca; Lehet, Matthew; Widick, Page; Woods, Adam J.; Kimberg, Daniel Y.; Chatterjee, Anjan

2012-01-01

Schemas are abstract nonverbal representations that parsimoniously depict spatial relations. Despite their ubiquitous use in maps and diagrams, little is known about their neural instantiation. We sought to determine the extent to which schematic representations are neurally distinguished from language on the one hand, and from rich perceptual…

The response matrix method for the representation of the border conditions in the three-dimensional difussion codes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Grant, C.R.

1981-01-01

It could take a considerable amount of memory and processing time to represent a reactor in its simulation by means of a diffusion code and considering areas in which nuclear and geometrical properties are invariant, such as reflector, water columns, etc. To avoid an explicit representation of these zones, a method employing a matrix was developed consisting in expressing the net currents of each group as a function of the total flux. Estimates are made for different geometries, introducing the PUMA difussion code of materials. Several tests made proved a very sound reliability of the results obtained in 2 and 5 groups. (author) [es

Super-linear Precision in Simple Neural Population Codes

Science.gov (United States)

Schwab, David; Fiete, Ila

2015-03-01

A widely used tool for quantifying the precision with which a population of noisy sensory neurons encodes the value of an external stimulus is the Fisher Information (FI). Maximizing the FI is also a commonly used objective for constructing optimal neural codes. The primary utility and importance of the FI arises because it gives, through the Cramer-Rao bound, the smallest mean-squared error achievable by any unbiased stimulus estimator. However, it is well-known that when neural firing is sparse, optimizing the FI can result in codes that perform very poorly when considering the resulting mean-squared error, a measure with direct biological relevance. Here we construct optimal population codes by minimizing mean-squared error directly and study the scaling properties of the resulting network, focusing on the optimal tuning curve width. We then extend our results to continuous attractor networks that maintain short-term memory of external stimuli in their dynamics. Here we find similar scaling properties in the structure of the interactions that minimize diffusive information loss.

An exploration of the relations between external representations and working memory.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jiajie Zhang

Full Text Available It is commonly hypothesized that external representations serve as memory aids and improve task performance by means of expanding the limited capacity of working memory. However, very few studies have directly examined this memory aid hypothesis. By systematically manipulating how information is available externally versus internally in a sequential number comparison task, three experiments were designed to investigate the relation between external representations and working memory. The experimental results show that when the task requires information from both external representations and working memory, it is the interaction of information from the two sources that determines task performance. In particular, when information from the two sources does not match well, external representations hinder instead of enhance task performance. The study highlights the important role the coordination among different representations plays in distributed cognition. The general relations between external representations and working memory are discussed.

Coding Theory, Cryptography and Related Areas

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Buchmann, Johannes; Stichtenoth, Henning; Tapia-Recillas, Horacio

Proceedings of anInternational Conference on Coding Theory, Cryptography and Related Areas, held in Guanajuato, Mexico. in april 1998......Proceedings of anInternational Conference on Coding Theory, Cryptography and Related Areas, held in Guanajuato, Mexico. in april 1998...

Code Cactus; Code Cactus

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Fajeau, M; Nguyen, L T; Saunier, J [Commissariat a l' Energie Atomique, Centre d' Etudes Nucleaires de Saclay, 91 - Gif-sur-Yvette (France)

1966-09-01

This code handles the following problems: -1) Analysis of thermal experiments on a water loop at high or low pressure; steady state or transient behavior; -2) Analysis of thermal and hydrodynamic behavior of water-cooled and moderated reactors, at either high or low pressure, with boiling permitted; fuel elements are assumed to be flat plates: - Flowrate in parallel channels coupled or not by conduction across plates, with conditions of pressure drops or flowrate, variable or not with respect to time is given; the power can be coupled to reactor kinetics calculation or supplied by the code user. The code, containing a schematic representation of safety rod behavior, is a one dimensional, multi-channel code, and has as its complement (FLID), a one-channel, two-dimensional code. (authors) [French] Ce code permet de traiter les problemes ci-dessous: 1. Depouillement d'essais thermiques sur boucle a eau, haute ou basse pression, en regime permanent ou transitoire; 2. Etudes thermiques et hydrauliques de reacteurs a eau, a plaques, a haute ou basse pression, ebullition permise: - repartition entre canaux paralleles, couples on non par conduction a travers plaques, pour des conditions de debit ou de pertes de charge imposees, variables ou non dans le temps; - la puissance peut etre couplee a la neutronique et une representation schematique des actions de securite est prevue. Ce code (Cactus) a une dimension d'espace et plusieurs canaux, a pour complement Flid qui traite l'etude d'un seul canal a deux dimensions. (auteurs)

A user's guide to GENEX, SDR, and related computer codes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Brissenden, R.J.; Durston, C.

1968-08-01

This series of codes will be of use in a variety of fields connected with reactor physics, examples of which are: (a) In evaluation of nuclear data in which the RESP-GENEX part of the system would be used to examine and produce a cross-section set based on the theories and experiments of the nuclear physicists. The approximations in GENEX must however be kept in mind, the chief one being the diagonal expansion approximation of the inverse level matrix originally due to Bethe which precludes a correct representation of strong interference effects (the Lynn effect). (b) In the calculation of Doppler effects or other resonance effects such as establishing equivalence relationships, approximate resonance treatments, etc. A given set of tapes generated by GENEX (or by some other means into the GENEX format) would be used to run the SDH code. The SDR code produces cross-sections and reaction rates over any group structure within its working range. In situations with complex geometries the spatial representation of SDR is liable to be inadequate and in these circumstances it is recommended that the reaction rates are not used directly but instead the cross-sections are used in a more accurate spatial calculation to produce revised reaction rates. (c) Finally the system may be used for a variety of special investigations such as an analysis of the variance of the Doppler coefficient in fast reactors or the accurate assessment of ideal integral measurements, (for instance the Aldermaston sphere experiment

Code-specific learning rules improve action selection by populations of spiking neurons.

Science.gov (United States)

Friedrich, Johannes; Urbanczik, Robert; Senn, Walter

2014-08-01

Population coding is widely regarded as a key mechanism for achieving reliable behavioral decisions. We previously introduced reinforcement learning for population-based decision making by spiking neurons. Here we generalize population reinforcement learning to spike-based plasticity rules that take account of the postsynaptic neural code. We consider spike/no-spike, spike count and spike latency codes. The multi-valued and continuous-valued features in the postsynaptic code allow for a generalization of binary decision making to multi-valued decision making and continuous-valued action selection. We show that code-specific learning rules speed up learning both for the discrete classification and the continuous regression tasks. The suggested learning rules also speed up with increasing population size as opposed to standard reinforcement learning rules. Continuous action selection is further shown to explain realistic learning speeds in the Morris water maze. Finally, we introduce the concept of action perturbation as opposed to the classical weight- or node-perturbation as an exploration mechanism underlying reinforcement learning. Exploration in the action space greatly increases the speed of learning as compared to exploration in the neuron or weight space.

Selective population rate coding: a possible computational role of gamma oscillations in selective attention.

Science.gov (United States)

Masuda, Naoki

2009-12-01

Selective attention is often accompanied by gamma oscillations in local field potentials and spike field coherence in brain areas related to visual, motor, and cognitive information processing. Gamma oscillations are implicated to play an important role in, for example, visual tasks including object search, shape perception, and speed detection. However, the mechanism by which gamma oscillations enhance cognitive and behavioral performance of attentive subjects is still elusive. Using feedforward fan-in networks composed of spiking neurons, we examine a possible role for gamma oscillations in selective attention and population rate coding of external stimuli. We implement the concept proposed by Fries ( 2005 ) that under dynamic stimuli, neural populations effectively communicate with each other only when there is a good phase relationship among associated gamma oscillations. We show that the downstream neural population selects a specific dynamic stimulus received by an upstream population and represents it by population rate coding. The encoded stimulus is the one for which gamma rhythm in the corresponding upstream population is resonant with the downstream gamma rhythm. The proposed role for gamma oscillations in stimulus selection is to enable top-down control, a neural version of time division multiple access used in communication engineering.

Attention Effects on Neural Population Representations for Shape and Location Are Stronger in the Ventral than Dorsal Stream

Science.gov (United States)

2018-01-01

Abstract We examined how attention causes neural population representations of shape and location to change in ventral stream (AIT) and dorsal stream (LIP). Monkeys performed two identical delayed-match-to-sample (DMTS) tasks, attending either to shape or location. In AIT, shapes were more discriminable when directing attention to shape rather than location, measured by an increase in mean distance between population response vectors. In LIP, attending to location rather than shape did not increase the discriminability of different stimulus locations. Even when factoring out the change in mean vector response distance, multidimensional scaling (MDS) still showed a significant task difference in AIT, but not LIP, indicating that beyond increasing discriminability, attention also causes a nonlinear warping of representation space in AIT. Despite single-cell attentional modulations in both areas, our data show that attentional modulations of population representations are weaker in LIP, likely due to a need to maintain veridical representations for visuomotor control. PMID:29876521

INCREASING THE REPRESENTATION OF THE BLACK POPULATION IN THE HEALTH PROFESSIONS IN CANADA.

Science.gov (United States)

Vukic, Adele; Steenbeek, Audrey; Muxlow, Josephine

2016-01-01

Increased representation of the Black population in the health care system is central to decrease health disparities, enhance access to services, and improve health outcomes and quality of care. Current strategies for recruitment and retention of the Black population in higher education in the health fields are explored. The added value of mentorship programs are presented as a promising approach for addressing the high rates of attrition of the Black population in health professional education institutions.

Adaptation of Zerotrees Using Signed Binary Digit Representations for 3D Image Coding

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mailhes Corinne

2007-01-01

Full Text Available Zerotrees of wavelet coefficients have shown a good adaptability for the compression of three-dimensional images. EZW, the original algorithm using zerotree, shows good performance and was successfully adapted to 3D image compression. This paper focuses on the adaptation of EZW for the compression of hyperspectral images. The subordinate pass is suppressed to remove the necessity to keep the significant pixels in memory. To compensate the loss due to this removal, signed binary digit representations are used to increase the efficiency of zerotrees. Contextual arithmetic coding with very limited contexts is also used. Finally, we show that this simplified version of 3D-EZW performs almost as well as the original one.

Attachment-related mental representations: introduction to the special issue.

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Ross A

2008-12-01

Bowlby's concept of mental working models of self, attachment figures, and the social world has been theoretically generative as a bridge between early relational experience and the beliefs and expectations that color later relationships. Contemporary attachment researchers, following his example, are applying new knowledge of children's conceptual development to their study of attachment-related mental representations in children and adults. The contributors to this special issue highlight recent advances in how the mental representations arising from attachment security should be conceptualized and studied, and identify a number of important directions for future work. This paper introduces the special issue by summarizing the major ideas of Bowlby and his followers concerning the nature and development of mental working models, points of theoretical clarity and uncertainty, and challenges in assessing these representations, as well as profiling each of the contributions to this issue.

[Social Representations Related to Anemia in Children Under Three years in Awajún and Wampis Communities of Peru].

Science.gov (United States)

Mayca-Pérez, Julio; Medina-Ibañez, Armando; Velásquez-Hurtado, José E; Llanos-Zavalaga, Luis F

2017-01-01

To understand the social representations of the Awajún and Wampis communities related to the symptoms and treatment of anemia in children younger than 3 years, as well as the relationship of these representations with the symbolism, constructs, and type of diet of these populations. This qualitative study was conducted from June to August 2015 in the districts of Río Santiago, Cenepa, and Nieva (Amazon region, Peru), and included in-depth interviews (IDIs) of health personnel, community authorities, parents, and focus groups (FGs) for mothers. A total of 38 IDIs and 13 FGs were conducted. The evaluated populations had limited awareness about anemia and health personnel, but anemia with symptoms were correlated with social representations and cultural manifestations. This behavior was reflected in the parents' choice of treatments that were not necessarily the same as those indicated by the health personnel, and these social groups preferred the consumption of certain foods that were considered to cure the "putsumat". Visiting a health care center or using micronutrients was not their first treatment option. Social representations and traditional practices still exist, and include interpretative systems in health, disease, and disease management. The logic, meaning, and coherence of these practices depend on the cultural group considered. The "putsumat" or "putsuju" is an interpretive model for anemia, and the symptoms in children include pallor, thinness, and fatigue; this model is based on the cultural system of the Awajún and Wampis populations.

Representations and Relations

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Koťátko, Petr

2014-01-01

Roč. 21, č. 3 (2014), s. 282-302 ISSN 1335-0668 Institutional support: RVO:67985955 Keywords : representation * proposition * truth-conditions * belief-ascriptions * reference * externalism * fiction Subject RIV: AA - Philosophy ; Religion

The Relative Lie Algebra Cohomology of the Weil Representation

Science.gov (United States)

Ralston, Jacob

We study the relative Lie algebra cohomology of so(p,q) with values in the Weil representation piof the dual pair Sp(2k, R) x O(p,q ). Using the Fock model defined in Chapter 2, we filter this complex and construct the associated spectral sequence. We then prove that the resulting spectral sequence converges to the relative Lie algebra cohomology and has E0 term, the associated graded complex, isomorphic to a Koszul complex, see Section 3.4. It is immediate that the construction of the spectral sequence of Chapter 3 can be applied to any reductive subalgebra g ⊂ sp(2k(p + q), R). By the Weil representation of O( p,|q), we mean the twist of the Weil representation of the two-fold cover O(pq)[special character omitted] by a suitable character. We do this to make the center of O(pq)[special character omitted] act trivially. Otherwise, all relative Lie algebra cohomology groups would vanish, see Proposition 4.10.2. In case the symplectic group is large relative to the orthogonal group (k ≥ pq), the E 0 term is isomorphic to a Koszul complex defined by a regular sequence, see 3.4. Thus, the cohomology vanishes except in top degree. This result is obtained without calculating the space of cochains and hence without using any representation theory. On the other hand, in case k BMR], this author wrote with his advisor John Millson and Nicolas Bergeron of the University of Paris.

Comments related to infinite wedge representations

OpenAIRE

Grieve, Nathan

2016-01-01

We study the infinite wedge representation and show how it is related to the universal extension of $g[t,t^{-1}]$ the loop algebra of a complex semi-simple Lie algebra $g$. We also give an elementary proof of the boson-fermion correspondence. Our approach to proving this result is based on a combinatorial construction with partitions combined with an application of the Murnaghan-Nakayama rule.

A mixture of sparse coding models explaining properties of face neurons related to holistic and parts-based processing.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Haruo Hosoya

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Experimental studies have revealed evidence of both parts-based and holistic representations of objects and faces in the primate visual system. However, it is still a mystery how such seemingly contradictory types of processing can coexist within a single system. Here, we propose a novel theory called mixture of sparse coding models, inspired by the formation of category-specific subregions in the inferotemporal (IT cortex. We developed a hierarchical network that constructed a mixture of two sparse coding submodels on top of a simple Gabor analysis. The submodels were each trained with face or non-face object images, which resulted in separate representations of facial parts and object parts. Importantly, evoked neural activities were modeled by Bayesian inference, which had a top-down explaining-away effect that enabled recognition of an individual part to depend strongly on the category of the whole input. We show that this explaining-away effect was indeed crucial for the units in the face submodel to exhibit significant selectivity to face images over object images in a similar way to actual face-selective neurons in the macaque IT cortex. Furthermore, the model explained, qualitatively and quantitatively, several tuning properties to facial features found in the middle patch of face processing in IT as documented by Freiwald, Tsao, and Livingstone (2009. These included, in particular, tuning to only a small number of facial features that were often related to geometrically large parts like face outline and hair, preference and anti-preference of extreme facial features (e.g., very large/small inter-eye distance, and reduction of the gain of feature tuning for partial face stimuli compared to whole face stimuli. Thus, we hypothesize that the coding principle of facial features in the middle patch of face processing in the macaque IT cortex may be closely related to mixture of sparse coding models.

The impact of conventional dietary intake data coding methods on foods typically consumed by low-income African-American and White urban populations.

Science.gov (United States)

Mason, Marc A; Fanelli Kuczmarski, Marie; Allegro, Deanne; Zonderman, Alan B; Evans, Michele K

2015-08-01

Analysing dietary data to capture how individuals typically consume foods is dependent on the coding variables used. Individual foods consumed simultaneously, like coffee with milk, are given codes to identify these combinations. Our literature review revealed a lack of discussion about using combination codes in analysis. The present study identified foods consumed at mealtimes and by race when combination codes were or were not utilized. Duplicate analysis methods were performed on separate data sets. The original data set consisted of all foods reported; each food was coded as if it was consumed individually. The revised data set was derived from the original data set by first isolating coded foods consumed as individual items from those foods consumed simultaneously and assigning a code to designate a combination. Foods assigned a combination code, like pancakes with syrup, were aggregated and associated with a food group, defined by the major food component (i.e. pancakes), and then appended to the isolated coded foods. Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span study. African-American and White adults with two dietary recalls (n 2177). Differences existed in lists of foods most frequently consumed by mealtime and race when comparing results based on original and revised data sets. African Americans reported consumption of sausage/luncheon meat and poultry, while ready-to-eat cereals and cakes/doughnuts/pastries were reported by Whites on recalls. Use of combination codes provided more accurate representation of how foods were consumed by populations. This information is beneficial when creating interventions and exploring diet-health relationships.

Converting boundary representation solid models to half-space representation models for Monte Carlo analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Davis, J. E.; Eddy, M. J.; Sutton, T. M.; Altomari, T. J.

2007-01-01

Solid modeling computer software systems provide for the design of three-dimensional solid models used in the design and analysis of physical components. The current state-of-the-art in solid modeling representation uses a boundary representation format in which geometry and topology are used to form three-dimensional boundaries of the solid. The geometry representation used in these systems is cubic B-spline curves and surfaces - a network of cubic B-spline functions in three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate space. Many Monte Carlo codes, however, use a geometry representation in which geometry units are specified by intersections and unions of half-spaces. This paper describes an algorithm for converting from a boundary representation to a half-space representation. (authors)

Visual attention mitigates information loss in small- and large-scale neural codes

Science.gov (United States)

Sprague, Thomas C; Saproo, Sameer; Serences, John T

2015-01-01

Summary The visual system transforms complex inputs into robust and parsimonious neural codes that efficiently guide behavior. Because neural communication is stochastic, the amount of encoded visual information necessarily decreases with each synapse. This constraint requires processing sensory signals in a manner that protects information about relevant stimuli from degradation. Such selective processing – or selective attention – is implemented via several mechanisms, including neural gain and changes in tuning properties. However, examining each of these effects in isolation obscures their joint impact on the fidelity of stimulus feature representations by large-scale population codes. Instead, large-scale activity patterns can be used to reconstruct representations of relevant and irrelevant stimuli, providing a holistic understanding about how neuron-level modulations collectively impact stimulus encoding. PMID:25769502

Working memory templates are maintained as feature-specific perceptual codes.

Science.gov (United States)

Sreenivasan, Kartik K; Sambhara, Deepak; Jha, Amishi P

2011-07-01

Working memory (WM) representations serve as templates that guide behavior, but the neural basis of these templates remains elusive. We tested the hypothesis that WM templates are maintained by biasing activity in sensoriperceptual neurons that code for features of items being held in memory. Neural activity was recorded using event-related potentials (ERPs) as participants viewed a series of faces and responded when a face matched a target face held in WM. Our prediction was that if activity in neurons coding for the features of the target is preferentially weighted during maintenance of the target, then ERP activity evoked by a nontarget probe face should be commensurate with the visual similarity between target and probe. Visual similarity was operationalized as the degree of overlap in visual features between target and probe. A face-sensitive ERP response was modulated by target-probe similarity. Amplitude was largest for probes that were similar to the target, and decreased monotonically as a function of decreasing target-probe similarity. These results indicate that neural activity is weighted in favor of visual features that comprise an actively held memory representation. As such, our findings support the notion that WM templates rely on neural populations involved in forming percepts of memory items.

The Impact of Merger Status and Relative Representation on Identification with a Merger Group

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Filip Boen

2005-12-01

Full Text Available This experiment tested to what extent identification with a new merger group is determined by the status of that merger group and by the relative representation of the pre-merger ingroup. One hundred university students were assigned to a team of 'inductive' thinkers, and were later merged with a team of 'deductive' thinkers to form a team of 'analyst' thinkers. The status of the merger group (low, high and the relative representation of the ingroup into the novel merger group (low, high were manipulated. Participants identified more with the merger group in the high than in the low status condition, and they identified more in the high than in the low representation condition. The predicted interaction between relative representation and merger status was not significant. However, relative representation did interact with participants' pre-merger identification: Pre- and post-merger identification were positively related when the ingroup was highly represented, but 'negatively' when the ingroup was lowly represented.

On Code Parameters and Coding Vector Representation for Practical RLNC

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Heide, Janus; Pedersen, Morten Videbæk; Fitzek, Frank

2011-01-01

RLNC provides a theoretically efficient method for coding. The drawbacks associated with it are the complexity of the decoding and the overhead resulting from the encoding vector. Increasing the field size and generation size presents a fundamental trade-off between packet-based throughput...... to higher energy consumption. Therefore, the optimal trade-off is system and topology dependent, as it depends on the cost in energy of performing coding operations versus transmitting data. We show that moderate field sizes are the correct choice when trade-offs are considered. The results show that sparse...

Synchronous spikes are necessary but not sufficient for a synchrony code in populations of spiking neurons.

Science.gov (United States)

Grewe, Jan; Kruscha, Alexandra; Lindner, Benjamin; Benda, Jan

2017-03-07

Synchronous activity in populations of neurons potentially encodes special stimulus features. Selective readout of either synchronous or asynchronous activity allows formation of two streams of information processing. Theoretical work predicts that such a synchrony code is a fundamental feature of populations of spiking neurons if they operate in specific noise and stimulus regimes. Here we experimentally test the theoretical predictions by quantifying and comparing neuronal response properties in tuberous and ampullary electroreceptor afferents of the weakly electric fish Apteronotus leptorhynchus These related systems show similar levels of synchronous activity, but only in the more irregularly firing tuberous afferents a synchrony code is established, whereas in the more regularly firing ampullary afferents it is not. The mere existence of synchronous activity is thus not sufficient for a synchrony code. Single-cell features such as the irregularity of spiking and the frequency dependence of the neuron's transfer function determine whether synchronous spikes possess a distinct meaning for the encoding of time-dependent signals.

Deciphering neuronal population codes for acute thermal pain

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Zhe; Zhang, Qiaosheng; Phuong Sieu Tong, Ai; Manders, Toby R.; Wang, Jing

2017-06-01

Objective. Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage. Current pain research mostly focuses on molecular and synaptic changes at the spinal and peripheral levels. However, a complete understanding of pain mechanisms requires the physiological study of the neocortex. Our goal is to apply a neural decoding approach to read out the onset of acute thermal pain signals, which can be used for brain-machine interface. Approach. We used micro wire arrays to record ensemble neuronal activities from the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in freely behaving rats. We further investigated neural codes for acute thermal pain at both single-cell and population levels. To detect the onset of acute thermal pain signals, we developed a novel latent state-space framework to decipher the sorted or unsorted S1 and ACC ensemble spike activities, which reveal information about the onset of pain signals. Main results. The state space analysis allows us to uncover a latent state process that drives the observed ensemble spike activity, and to further detect the ‘neuronal threshold’ for acute thermal pain on a single-trial basis. Our method achieved good detection performance in sensitivity and specificity. In addition, our results suggested that an optimal strategy for detecting the onset of acute thermal pain signals may be based on combined evidence from S1 and ACC population codes. Significance. Our study is the first to detect the onset of acute pain signals based on neuronal ensemble spike activity. It is important from a mechanistic viewpoint as it relates to the significance of S1 and ACC activities in the regulation of the acute pain onset.

Mastery of Content Representation (CoRes) Related TPACK High School Biology Teacher

Science.gov (United States)

Nasution, W. R.; Sriyati, S.; Riandi, R.; Safitri, M.

2017-09-01

The purpose of this study was to determine the mastery of Content Representation (CoRes) teachers related to the integration of technology and pedagogy in teaching Biology (TPACK). This research uses a descriptive method. The data were taken using instruments CoRes as the primary data and semi-structured interviews as supporting data. The subjects were biology teacher in class X MIA from four schools in Bandung. Teachers raised CoRes was analyzed using a scoring rubric CoRes with coding 1-3 then categorized into a group of upper, middle, or lower. The results showed that the two teachers in the lower category. This results means that the control of teachers in defining the essential concept in the CoRes has not been detailed and specific. Meanwhile, two other teachers were in the middle category. This means that the ability of teachers to determine the essential concepts in the CoRes are still inadequate so that still needs to be improved.

Ensembles of a small number of conformations with relative populations

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Vammi, Vijay, E-mail: vsvammi@iastate.edu; Song, Guang, E-mail: gsong@iastate.edu [Iowa State University, Bioinformatics and Computational Biology Program, Department of Computer Science (United States)

2015-12-15

In our previous work, we proposed a new way to represent protein native states, using ensembles of a small number of conformations with relative Populations, or ESP in short. Using Ubiquitin as an example, we showed that using a small number of conformations could greatly reduce the potential of overfitting and assigning relative populations to protein ensembles could significantly improve their quality. To demonstrate that ESP indeed is an excellent alternative to represent protein native states, in this work we compare the quality of two ESP ensembles of Ubiquitin with several well-known regular ensembles or average structure representations. Extensive amount of significant experimental data are employed to achieve a thorough assessment. Our results demonstrate that ESP ensembles, though much smaller in size comparing to regular ensembles, perform equally or even better sometimes in all four different types of experimental data used in the assessment, namely, the residual dipolar couplings, residual chemical shift anisotropy, hydrogen exchange rates, and solution scattering profiles. This work further underlines the significance of having relative populations in describing the native states.

Braid group representation on quantum computation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Aziz, Ryan Kasyfil, E-mail: kasyfilryan@gmail.com [Department of Computational Sciences, Bandung Institute of Technology (Indonesia); Muchtadi-Alamsyah, Intan, E-mail: ntan@math.itb.ac.id [Algebra Research Group, Bandung Institute of Technology (Indonesia)

2015-09-30

There are many studies about topological representation of quantum computation recently. One of diagram representation of quantum computation is by using ZX-Calculus. In this paper we will make a diagrammatical scheme of Dense Coding. We also proved that ZX-Calculus diagram of maximally entangle state satisfies Yang-Baxter Equation and therefore, we can construct a Braid Group representation of set of maximally entangle state.

DELIN and DELOG codes for graphic representation of gamma ray spectra; Programas DELIN y DELOG para la representacion grafica de espectros gamma

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Romero, L; Travesi, A

1983-07-01

Two Fortran IV Codes has been developed for graphic representation of the gamma-ray spectra obtained with Ge Li detectors and multichannel analyzers. The grafic plotting es carried out with the H.P. Graphic Plotter Mod HP-7221 A, using the graphic package software GRAPHICS-1000 from Hewlett-Packard. The codes have a great versatility and the representation of gamma spectra can ba done in a lineal, semi log, or log-log scale, as desired. The gamma ray spectra data are feed into the computer through magnetic tape or perfored paper tape. The different out-put options and complementary data are given in a conversational way through a terminal with T.V. displays. Among the options that can be selected by the user are the following: - smoothing the spectra - drawing the spectra point by point or continuous - out-put drawing an 1, 2, or 4 sheet with automatic division of the energy scale. - overlapping of selected spectra regions in Y scale ampliation with automatic print-out of the region limits and ampliation factor. - Printing spectra data and identifications of selected photo peaks. The codes can be employed with any computer using printing devices, HP-Graphics 1000 software compatible, but are easily modified for another printing software since their modular structure with Fortran IV written.

A Gray-code-based color image representation method using TSNAM%TSNAM彩色图像的格雷码表示

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

郑运平; 张佳婧

2012-01-01

为了提高彩色图像模式的表示效率,借助于三角形和正方形布局问题的思想,将格雷码和位平面分解方法应用到彩色图像的三角形和正方形NAM表示方法(TSNAM)中,提出了一种基于格雷码的TSNAM彩色图像表示方法(GTSNAM).给出了GTSNAM表示算法的形式化描述,并对其存储结构、总数据量和时空复杂性进行了分析.理论分析和实验结果表明,与最新提出的TSNAM表示方法和经典的线性四元树(LQT)表示方法相比,GTSNAM表示方法具有更少的子模式数(或节点数),能够更有效地减少数据存储空间,因而是一种有效的彩色图像表示方法.%Inspired by an idea obtained from the triangle and the square packing problems, a new Gray-code-based color image representation method using a non-symmetry and anti-packing pattern representation model with the triangle and the square subpatterns (TSNAM) , also called the GTSNAM representation method, was proposed to improve the representation efficiency of color images by applying the Gray code and the bit-plane decomposition method. Also, a concrete algorithm of GTSNAM for color images was presented, and the storage structure, the total data amount, and the time and space complexities of the proposed algorithm were analyzed. By comparing the GTSNAM algorithm with those of the classic linear quadtree (LQT) and the latest TSNAM, which is not based on the Gray code, the theoretical and experimental results show that the former can greatly reduce the number of subpatterns or nodes and simultaneously save the storage space much more effectively than the latter ones. The GTSNAM algorithm is therefore shown to be a better method to represent color images.

Visual attention mitigates information loss in small- and large-scale neural codes.

Science.gov (United States)

Sprague, Thomas C; Saproo, Sameer; Serences, John T

2015-04-01

The visual system transforms complex inputs into robust and parsimonious neural codes that efficiently guide behavior. Because neural communication is stochastic, the amount of encoded visual information necessarily decreases with each synapse. This constraint requires that sensory signals are processed in a manner that protects information about relevant stimuli from degradation. Such selective processing--or selective attention--is implemented via several mechanisms, including neural gain and changes in tuning properties. However, examining each of these effects in isolation obscures their joint impact on the fidelity of stimulus feature representations by large-scale population codes. Instead, large-scale activity patterns can be used to reconstruct representations of relevant and irrelevant stimuli, thereby providing a holistic understanding about how neuron-level modulations collectively impact stimulus encoding. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

General regression and representation model for classification.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jianjun Qian

Full Text Available Recently, the regularized coding-based classification methods (e.g. SRC and CRC show a great potential for pattern classification. However, most existing coding methods assume that the representation residuals are uncorrelated. In real-world applications, this assumption does not hold. In this paper, we take account of the correlations of the representation residuals and develop a general regression and representation model (GRR for classification. GRR not only has advantages of CRC, but also takes full use of the prior information (e.g. the correlations between representation residuals and representation coefficients and the specific information (weight matrix of image pixels to enhance the classification performance. GRR uses the generalized Tikhonov regularization and K Nearest Neighbors to learn the prior information from the training data. Meanwhile, the specific information is obtained by using an iterative algorithm to update the feature (or image pixel weights of the test sample. With the proposed model as a platform, we design two classifiers: basic general regression and representation classifier (B-GRR and robust general regression and representation classifier (R-GRR. The experimental results demonstrate the performance advantages of proposed methods over state-of-the-art algorithms.

Duals of Affine Grassmann Codes and Their Relatives

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Beelen, P.; Ghorpade, S. R.; Hoholdt, T.

2012-01-01

Affine Grassmann codes are a variant of generalized Reed-Muller codes and are closely related to Grassmann codes. These codes were introduced in a recent work by Beelen Here, we consider, more generally, affine Grassmann codes of a given level. We explicitly determine the dual of an affine...... Grassmann code of any level and compute its minimum distance. Further, we ameliorate the results by Beelen concerning the automorphism group of affine Grassmann codes. Finally, we prove that affine Grassmann codes and their duals have the property that they are linear codes generated by their minimum......-weight codewords. This provides a clean analogue of a corresponding result for generalized Reed-Muller codes....

Trellises for stabilizer codes: Definition and uses

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ollivier, Harold; Tillich, Jean-Pierre

2006-01-01

Trellises play an important theoretical and practical role for classical codes. Their main utility is to devise complexity-efficient error estimation algorithms. Here, we describe trellis representations for quantum stabilizer codes. We show that they share the same properties as their classical analogs. In particular, for any stabilizer code it is possible to find a minimal trellis representation. Our construction is illustrated by two fundamental error estimation algorithms

Representations for implicit constitutive relations describing non-dissipative response of isotropic materials

Science.gov (United States)

Gokulnath, C.; Saravanan, U.; Rajagopal, K. R.

2017-12-01

A methodology for obtaining implicit constitutive representations involving the Cauchy stress and the Hencky strain for isotropic materials undergoing a non-dissipative process is developed. Using this methodology, a general constitutive representation for a subclass of implicit models relating the Cauchy stress and the Hencky strain is obtained for an isotropic material with no internal constraints. It is shown that even for this subclass, unlike classical Green elasticity, one has to specify three potentials to relate the Cauchy stress and the Hencky strain. Then, a procedure to obtain implicit constitutive representations for isotropic materials with internal constraints is presented. As an illustration, it is shown that for incompressible materials the Cauchy stress and the Hencky strain could be related through a single potential. Finally, constitutive approximations are obtained when the displacement gradient is small.

MOTHERS' AND FATHERS' PRENATAL REPRESENTATIONS IN RELATION TO MARITAL DISTRESS AND DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS.

Science.gov (United States)

Ahlqvist-Björkroth, Sari; Korja, Riikka; Junttila, Niina; Savonlahti, Elina; Pajulo, Marjukka; Räihä, Hannele; Aromaa, Minna

2016-07-01

Marital distress, parental depression, and weak quality of parental representations are all known risk factors for parent-child relationships. However, the relation between marital distress, depressive symptoms, and parents' prenatal representation is uncertain, especially regarding fathers. The present study aimed to explore how mothers' and fathers' prenatal experience of marital distress and depressive symptoms affects the organization of their prenatal representations in late pregnancy. Participants were 153 pregnant couples from a Finnish follow-up study called "Steps to the Healthy Development and Well-being of Children" (H. Lagström et al., ). Marital distress (Revised Dyadic Adjustment Scale; D.M. Busby, C. Christensen, D. Crane, & J. Larson, 1995) and depressive symptoms (Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale) were assessed at 20 gestational weeks, and prenatal representations (Working Model of the Child Interview; D. Benoit, K.C.H. Parker, & C.H. Zeanah, 1997; C.H. Zeanah, D. Benoit, M. Barton, & L. Hirshberg, 1996) were assessed between 29 and 32 gestational weeks. The mothers' risks of distorted representations increased significantly when they had at least minor depressive symptoms. Marital distress was associated with the fathers' prenatal representations, although the association was weak; fathers within the marital distress group had less balanced representations. Coexisting marital distress and depressive symptoms were only associated with the mothers' representations; lack of marital distress and depressive symptoms increased the likelihood for mothers to have balanced representations. The results imply that marital distress and depressive symptoms are differently related to the organizations of mothers' and fathers' prenatal representations. © 2016 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health.

The role of national identity representation in the relation between in-group identification and out-group derogation: Ethnic versus civic representation

OpenAIRE

Meeus, Joke; Duriez, Bart; Vanbeselaere, Norbert; Boen, Filip

2010-01-01

Two studies investigated whether the content of in-group identity affects the relation between in-group identification and ethnic prejudice. The first study among university students, tested whether national identity representations (i.e. ethnic vs. civic) moderate or mediate the relation between Flemish in-group identification and ethnic prejudice. A moderation hypothesis is supported when those higher in identification who subscribe to a more ethnic representation display higher ethnic prej...

Assigning clinical codes with data-driven concept representation on Dutch clinical free text.

Science.gov (United States)

Scheurwegs, Elyne; Luyckx, Kim; Luyten, Léon; Goethals, Bart; Daelemans, Walter

2017-05-01

Clinical codes are used for public reporting purposes, are fundamental to determining public financing for hospitals, and form the basis for reimbursement claims to insurance providers. They are assigned to a patient stay to reflect the diagnosis and performed procedures during that stay. This paper aims to enrich algorithms for automated clinical coding by taking a data-driven approach and by using unsupervised and semi-supervised techniques for the extraction of multi-word expressions that convey a generalisable medical meaning (referred to as concepts). Several methods for extracting concepts from text are compared, two of which are constructed from a large unannotated corpus of clinical free text. A distributional semantic model (i.c. the word2vec skip-gram model) is used to generalize over concepts and retrieve relations between them. These methods are validated on three sets of patient stay data, in the disease areas of urology, cardiology, and gastroenterology. The datasets are in Dutch, which introduces a limitation on available concept definitions from expert-based ontologies (e.g. UMLS). The results show that when expert-based knowledge in ontologies is unavailable, concepts derived from raw clinical texts are a reliable alternative. Both concepts derived from raw clinical texts perform and concepts derived from expert-created dictionaries outperform a bag-of-words approach in clinical code assignment. Adding features based on tokens that appear in a semantically similar context has a positive influence for predicting diagnostic codes. Furthermore, the experiments indicate that a distributional semantics model can find relations between semantically related concepts in texts but also introduces erroneous and redundant relations, which can undermine clinical coding performance. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Analog system for computing sparse codes

Science.gov (United States)

Rozell, Christopher John; Johnson, Don Herrick; Baraniuk, Richard Gordon; Olshausen, Bruno A.; Ortman, Robert Lowell

2010-08-24

A parallel dynamical system for computing sparse representations of data, i.e., where the data can be fully represented in terms of a small number of non-zero code elements, and for reconstructing compressively sensed images. The system is based on the principles of thresholding and local competition that solves a family of sparse approximation problems corresponding to various sparsity metrics. The system utilizes Locally Competitive Algorithms (LCAs), nodes in a population continually compete with neighboring units using (usually one-way) lateral inhibition to calculate coefficients representing an input in an over complete dictionary.

Remodularizing Java Programs for Improved Locality of Feature Implementations in Source Code

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Olszak, Andrzej; Jørgensen, Bo Nørregaard

2011-01-01

Explicit traceability between features and source code is known to help programmers to understand and modify programs during maintenance tasks. However, the complex relations between features and their implementations are not evident from the source code of object-oriented Java programs....... Consequently, the implementations of individual features are difficult to locate, comprehend, and modify in isolation. In this paper, we present a novel remodularization approach that improves the representation of features in the source code of Java programs. Both forward- and reverse restructurings...... are supported through on-demand bidirectional restructuring between feature-oriented and object-oriented decompositions. The approach includes a feature location phase based of tracing program execution, a feature representation phase that reallocates classes into a new package structure based on single...

Adaptable Value-Set Analysis for Low-Level Code

OpenAIRE

Brauer, Jörg; Hansen, René Rydhof; Kowalewski, Stefan; Larsen, Kim G.; Olesen, Mads Chr.

2012-01-01

This paper presents a framework for binary code analysis that uses only SAT-based algorithms. Within the framework, incremental SAT solving is used to perform a form of weakly relational value-set analysis in a novel way, connecting the expressiveness of the value sets to computational complexity. Another key feature of our framework is that it translates the semantics of binary code into an intermediate representation. This allows for a straightforward translation of the program semantics in...

Representations of the algebra Uq'(son) related to quantum gravity

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Klimyk, A.U.

2002-01-01

The aim of this paper is to review our results on finite dimensional irreducible representations of the nonstandard q-deformation U q ' (so n ) of the universal enveloping algebra U(so(n)) of the Lie algebra so(n) which does not coincide with the Drinfeld-Jimbo quantum algebra U q (so n ).This algebra is related to algebras of observables in quantum gravity and to algebraic geometry.Irreducible finite dimensional representations of the algebra U q ' (so n ) for q not a root of unity and for q a root of unity are given

The role of stochasticity in an information-optimal neural population code

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Stocks, N G; Nikitin, A P; McDonnell, M D; Morse, R P

2009-01-01

In this paper we consider the optimisation of Shannon mutual information (MI) in the context of two model neural systems. The first is a stochastic pooling network (population) of McCulloch-Pitts (MP) type neurons (logical threshold units) subject to stochastic forcing; the second is (in a rate coding paradigm) a population of neurons that each displays Poisson statistics (the so called 'Poisson neuron'). The mutual information is optimised as a function of a parameter that characterises the 'noise level'-in the MP array this parameter is the standard deviation of the noise; in the population of Poisson neurons it is the window length used to determine the spike count. In both systems we find that the emergent neural architecture and, hence, code that maximises the MI is strongly influenced by the noise level. Low noise levels leads to a heterogeneous distribution of neural parameters (diversity), whereas, medium to high noise levels result in the clustering of neural parameters into distinct groups that can be interpreted as subpopulations. In both cases the number of subpopulations increases with a decrease in noise level. Our results suggest that subpopulations are a generic feature of an information optimal neural population.

Relations of Different Types of Numerical Magnitude Representations to Each Other and to Mathematics Achievement

Science.gov (United States)

Fazio, Lisa K.; Bailey, Drew H.; Thompson, Clarissa A.; Siegler, Robert S.

2014-01-01

We examined relations between symbolic and non-symbolic numerical magnitude representations, between whole number and fraction representations, and between these representations and overall mathematics achievement in fifth graders. Fraction and whole number symbolic and non-symbolic numerical magnitude understandings were measured using both…

An investigation of the constitutive relations for intersubchannel transfer mechanisms in horizontal flows as applied in the ASSERT-4 subchannel code

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tye, P.; Teyssedou, A.; Tapucu, A.

1994-01-01

In this paper, the influence that the constitutive relations used to represent some of the intersubchannel transfer mechanisms has on the predictions of the ASSERT-4 subchannel code for horizontal flows is examined. In particular the choices made in the representation of the gravity driven phase separation phenomena are analyzed. This is done by comparing the predictions of the ASSERT subchannel code with experimental data on void fraction and mass flow rate, obtained for two horizontal interconnected subchannels. ASSERT uses a drift flux model which allows the two phases to have different velocities. In particular ASSERT contains models for the buoyancy effects which cause phase separation between adjacent subchannels in horizontal flows. This feature, which is of great importance in the subchannel analysis of CANDU reactors, is implemented in the constitutive relationship for the relative velocity. In order to isolate different intersubchannel transfer mechanisms, three different subchannel orientations are analyzed. These are the two subchannels at the same elevation, the high void subchannel below the low void subchannel, and the high void subchannel above the low void subchannel. It is observed that for all three subchannel orientations ASSERT does a reasonably good job of predicting the experimental trends. However, certain modifications to the representation of the gravitational phase separation effects which seem to improve the overall predictions are suggested. ((orig.))

Discriminative sparse coding on multi-manifolds

KAUST Repository

Wang, J.J.-Y.; Bensmail, H.; Yao, N.; Gao, Xin

2013-01-01

Sparse coding has been popularly used as an effective data representation method in various applications, such as computer vision, medical imaging and bioinformatics. However, the conventional sparse coding algorithms and their manifold-regularized variants (graph sparse coding and Laplacian sparse coding), learn codebooks and codes in an unsupervised manner and neglect class information that is available in the training set. To address this problem, we propose a novel discriminative sparse coding method based on multi-manifolds, that learns discriminative class-conditioned codebooks and sparse codes from both data feature spaces and class labels. First, the entire training set is partitioned into multiple manifolds according to the class labels. Then, we formulate the sparse coding as a manifold-manifold matching problem and learn class-conditioned codebooks and codes to maximize the manifold margins of different classes. Lastly, we present a data sample-manifold matching-based strategy to classify the unlabeled data samples. Experimental results on somatic mutations identification and breast tumor classification based on ultrasonic images demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed data representation and classification approach. 2013 The Authors. All rights reserved.

Discriminative sparse coding on multi-manifolds

KAUST Repository

Wang, J.J.-Y.

2013-09-26

Sparse coding has been popularly used as an effective data representation method in various applications, such as computer vision, medical imaging and bioinformatics. However, the conventional sparse coding algorithms and their manifold-regularized variants (graph sparse coding and Laplacian sparse coding), learn codebooks and codes in an unsupervised manner and neglect class information that is available in the training set. To address this problem, we propose a novel discriminative sparse coding method based on multi-manifolds, that learns discriminative class-conditioned codebooks and sparse codes from both data feature spaces and class labels. First, the entire training set is partitioned into multiple manifolds according to the class labels. Then, we formulate the sparse coding as a manifold-manifold matching problem and learn class-conditioned codebooks and codes to maximize the manifold margins of different classes. Lastly, we present a data sample-manifold matching-based strategy to classify the unlabeled data samples. Experimental results on somatic mutations identification and breast tumor classification based on ultrasonic images demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed data representation and classification approach. 2013 The Authors. All rights reserved.

Collection of regulatory texts relative to radiation protection. Part 2: by-laws, decisions, non-codified decrees / Collection of legal and statutory provisions relative to radiation protection. Part 2: by-laws and decisions taken in application of the Public Health Code and Labour Code concerning the protection of populations, patients and workers against the risks of ionizing radiations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rivas, Robert; Feries, Jean; Marzorati, Frank; Chevalier, Celine; Lachaume, Jean-Luc

2012-01-01

This second part gathers texts extracted from the Public Health Code and related to ionizing radiations (general measures for the protection of the population, exposure to natural radiations, general regime of authorizations and declarations, purchase, retailing, importation, exportation, transfer and elimination of radioactive sources, protection of persons exposed to ionizing radiations for medical or forensics purposes, situations of radiological emergency and of sustained exposure to ionizing radiations, control), to the safety of waters and food products, and to the control of medical devices, to the protection of patients. It also contains extracts for the Labour Code related to workers protection. This document is an update of the previous version from March 2011

When sparse coding meets ranking: a joint framework for learning sparse codes and ranking scores

KAUST Repository

Wang, Jim Jing-Yan; Cui, Xuefeng; Yu, Ge; Guo, Lili; Gao, Xin

2017-01-01

Sparse coding, which represents a data point as a sparse reconstruction code with regard to a dictionary, has been a popular data representation method. Meanwhile, in database retrieval problems, learning the ranking scores from data points plays

Multi-Connection Pattern Analysis: Decoding the representational content of neural communication.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Yuanning; Richardson, Robert Mark; Ghuman, Avniel Singh

2017-11-15

The lack of multivariate methods for decoding the representational content of interregional neural communication has left it difficult to know what information is represented in distributed brain circuit interactions. Here we present Multi-Connection Pattern Analysis (MCPA), which works by learning mappings between the activity patterns of the populations as a factor of the information being processed. These maps are used to predict the activity from one neural population based on the activity from the other population. Successful MCPA-based decoding indicates the involvement of distributed computational processing and provides a framework for probing the representational structure of the interaction. Simulations demonstrate the efficacy of MCPA in realistic circumstances. In addition, we demonstrate that MCPA can be applied to different signal modalities to evaluate a variety of hypothesis associated with information coding in neural communications. We apply MCPA to fMRI and human intracranial electrophysiological data to provide a proof-of-concept of the utility of this method for decoding individual natural images and faces in functional connectivity data. We further use a MCPA-based representational similarity analysis to illustrate how MCPA may be used to test computational models of information transfer among regions of the visual processing stream. Thus, MCPA can be used to assess the information represented in the coupled activity of interacting neural circuits and probe the underlying principles of information transformation between regions. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Learning to Estimate Dynamical State with Probabilistic Population Codes.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joseph G Makin

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Tracking moving objects, including one's own body, is a fundamental ability of higher organisms, playing a central role in many perceptual and motor tasks. While it is unknown how the brain learns to follow and predict the dynamics of objects, it is known that this process of state estimation can be learned purely from the statistics of noisy observations. When the dynamics are simply linear with additive Gaussian noise, the optimal solution is the well known Kalman filter (KF, the parameters of which can be learned via latent-variable density estimation (the EM algorithm. The brain does not, however, directly manipulate matrices and vectors, but instead appears to represent probability distributions with the firing rates of population of neurons, "probabilistic population codes." We show that a recurrent neural network-a modified form of an exponential family harmonium (EFH-that takes a linear probabilistic population code as input can learn, without supervision, to estimate the state of a linear dynamical system. After observing a series of population responses (spike counts to the position of a moving object, the network learns to represent the velocity of the object and forms nearly optimal predictions about the position at the next time-step. This result builds on our previous work showing that a similar network can learn to perform multisensory integration and coordinate transformations for static stimuli. The receptive fields of the trained network also make qualitative predictions about the developing and learning brain: tuning gradually emerges for higher-order dynamical states not explicitly present in the inputs, appearing as delayed tuning for the lower-order states.

Representations in learning new faces: evidence from prosopagnosia.

Science.gov (United States)

Polster, M R; Rapcsak, S Z

1996-05-01

We report the performance of a prosopagnosic patient on face learning tasks under different encoding instructions (i.e., levels of processing manipulations). R.J. performs at chance when given no encoding instructions or when given "shallow" encoding instruction to focus on facial features. By contrast, he performs relatively well with "deep" encoding instructions to rate faces in terms of personality traits or when provided with semantic and name information during the study phase. We propose that the improvement associated with deep encoding instructions may be related to the establishment of distinct visually derived and identity-specific semantic codes. The benefit associated with deep encoding in R.J., however, was found to be restricted to the specific view of the face presented at study and did not generalize to other views of the same face. These observations suggest that deep encoding instructions may enhance memory for concrete or pictorial representations of faces in patients with prosopagnosia, but that these patients cannot compensate for the inability to construct abstract structural codes that normally allow faces to be recognized from different orientations. We postulate further that R.J.'s poor performance on face learning tasks may be attributable to excessive reliance on a feature-based left hemisphere face processing system that operates primarily on view-specific representations.

Distinguishing Representations as Origin and Representations as Input: Roles for Individual Cells

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jonathan C.W. Edwards

2016-09-01

Full Text Available It is widely perceived that there is a problem in giving a naturalistic account of mental representation that deals adequately with meaning, interpretation or significance (semantic content. It is suggested here that this problem may arise partly from the conflation of two vernacular senses of representation: representation-as-origin and representation-as-input. The flash of a neon sign may in one sense represent a popular drink, but to function as representation it must provide an input to a ‘consumer’ in the street. The arguments presented draw on two principles – the neuron doctrine and the need for a venue for ‘presentation’ or ‘reception’ of a representation at a specified site, consistent with the locality principle. It is also argued that domains of representation cannot be defined by signal traffic, since they can be expected to include ‘null’ elements based on non-firing cells. In this analysis, mental representations-as-origin are distributed patterns of cell firing. Each firing cell is given semantic value in its own right - some form of atomic propositional significance – since different axonal branches may contribute to integration with different populations of signals at different downstream sites. Representations-as-input are patterns of local co-arrival of signals in the form of synaptic potentials in dendrites. Meaning then draws on the relationships between active and null inputs, forming ‘scenarios’ comprising a molecular combination of ‘premises’ from which a new output with atomic propositional significance is generated. In both types of representation, meaning, interpretation or significance pivots on events in an individual cell. (This analysis only applies to ‘occurrent’ representations based on current neural activity. The concept of representations-as-input emphasises the need for a ‘consumer’ of a representation and the dependence of meaning on the co-relationships involved in an

Separate representation of stimulus frequency, intensity, and duration in auditory sensory memory: an event-related potential and dipole-model analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Giard, M H; Lavikahen, J; Reinikainen, K; Perrin, F; Bertrand, O; Pernier, J; Näätänen, R

1995-01-01

Abstract The present study analyzed the neural correlates of acoustic stimulus representation in echoic sensory memory. The neural traces of auditory sensory memory were indirectly studied by using the mismatch negativity (MMN), an event-related potential component elicited by a change in a repetitive sound. The MMN is assumed to reflect change detection in a comparison process between the sensory input from a deviant stimulus and the neural representation of repetitive stimuli in echoic memory. The scalp topographies of the MMNs elicited by pure tones deviating from standard tones by either frequency, intensity, or duration varied according to the type of stimulus deviance, indicating that the MMNs for different attributes originate, at least in part, from distinct neural populations in the auditory cortex. This result was supported by dipole-model analysis. If the MMN generator process occurs where the stimulus information is stored, these findings strongly suggest that the frequency, intensity, and duration of acoustic stimuli have a separate neural representation in sensory memory.

NHRIC (National Health Related Items Code)

Data.gov (United States)

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — The National Health Related Items Code (NHRIC) is a system for identification and numbering of marketed device packages that is compatible with other numbering...

Balanced distributed coding of omnidirectional images

Science.gov (United States)

Thirumalai, Vijayaraghavan; Tosic, Ivana; Frossard, Pascal

2008-01-01

This paper presents a distributed coding scheme for the representation of 3D scenes captured by stereo omni-directional cameras. We consider a scenario where images captured from two different viewpoints are encoded independently, with a balanced rate distribution among the different cameras. The distributed coding is built on multiresolution representation and partitioning of the visual information in each camera. The encoder transmits one partition after entropy coding, as well as the syndrome bits resulting from the channel encoding of the other partition. The decoder exploits the intra-view correlation and attempts to reconstruct the source image by combination of the entropy-coded partition and the syndrome information. At the same time, it exploits the inter-view correlation using motion estimation between images from different cameras. Experiments demonstrate that the distributed coding solution performs better than a scheme where images are handled independently, and that the coding rate stays balanced between encoders.

The role of stochasticity in an information-optimal neural population code

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Stocks, N G; Nikitin, A P [School of Engineering, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL (United Kingdom); McDonnell, M D [Institute for Telecommunications Research, University of South Australia, SA 5095 (Australia); Morse, R P, E-mail: n.g.stocks@warwick.ac.u [School of Life and Health Sciences, Aston University, Birmingham B4 7ET (United Kingdom)

2009-12-01

In this paper we consider the optimisation of Shannon mutual information (MI) in the context of two model neural systems. The first is a stochastic pooling network (population) of McCulloch-Pitts (MP) type neurons (logical threshold units) subject to stochastic forcing; the second is (in a rate coding paradigm) a population of neurons that each displays Poisson statistics (the so called 'Poisson neuron'). The mutual information is optimised as a function of a parameter that characterises the 'noise level'-in the MP array this parameter is the standard deviation of the noise; in the population of Poisson neurons it is the window length used to determine the spike count. In both systems we find that the emergent neural architecture and, hence, code that maximises the MI is strongly influenced by the noise level. Low noise levels leads to a heterogeneous distribution of neural parameters (diversity), whereas, medium to high noise levels result in the clustering of neural parameters into distinct groups that can be interpreted as subpopulations. In both cases the number of subpopulations increases with a decrease in noise level. Our results suggest that subpopulations are a generic feature of an information optimal neural population.

Spatial representations elicit dual-coding effects in mental imagery.

Science.gov (United States)

Verges, Michelle; Duffy, Sean

2009-08-01

Spatial aspects of words are associated with their canonical locations in the real world. Yet little research has tested whether spatial associations denoted in language comprehension generalize to their corresponding images. We directly tested the spatial aspects of mental imagery in picture and word processing (Experiment 1). We also tested whether spatial representations of motion words produce similar perceptual-interference effects as demonstrated by object words (Experiment 2). Findings revealed that words denoting an upward spatial location produced slower responses to targets appearing at the top of the display, whereas words denoting a downward spatial location produced slower responses to targets appearing at the bottom of the display. Perceptual-interference effects did not obtain for pictures or for words lacking a spatial relation. These findings provide greater empirical support for the perceptual-symbols system theory (Barsalou, 1999, 2008). Copyright © 2009 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

A skin colour code for the Nigerian (Negroid) population SUMMARY ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

kemrilib

SUMMARY. Some researchers have codified various people of different racial and pigment backgrounds into skin types. The West African native population generally falls into type VI – least likely to burn. There is a need for skin colour code in a multiethnic country like Nigeria especially for the purpose of health matters.

Logical knowledge representation of regulatory relations in biomedical pathways

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zambach, Sine; Hansen, Jens Ulrik

2010-01-01

Knowledge on regulatory relations, in for example regulatory pathways in biology, is used widely in experiment design by biomedical researchers and in systems biology. The knowledge has typically either been represented through simple graphs or through very expressive differential equation...... simulations of smaller parts of a pathway. In this work we suggest a knowledge representation of the most basic relations in regulatory processes regulates, positively regulates and negatively regulates in logics based on a semantic analysis. We discuss the usage of these relations in biology and in articial...... intelligence for hypothesis development in drug discovery....

Qualitative aspects of representational competence among college chemistry students: Multiple representations and their role in the understanding of ideal gases

Science.gov (United States)

Madden, Sean Patrick

This study examined the role of multiple representations of chemical phenomena, specifically, the temperature-pressure relationship of ideal gases, in the problem solving strategies of college chemistry students. Volunteers included students enrolled in a first semester general chemistry course at a western university. Two additional volunteers from the same university were asked to participate and serve as models of greater sophistication. One was a senior chemistry major; another was a junior science writing major. Volunteers completed an initial screening task involving multiple representations of concentration and dilution concepts. Based on the results of this screening instrument a smaller set of subjects were asked to complete a think aloud session involving multiple representations of the temperature-pressure relationship. Data consisted of the written work of the volunteers and transcripts from videotaped think aloud sessions. The data were evaluated by the researcher and two other graduate students in chemical education using a coding scheme (Kozma, Schank, Coppola, Michalchik, and Allen. 2000). This coding scheme was designed to identify essential features of representational competence and differences in uses of multiple representations. The results indicate that students tend to have a strong preference for one type of representation. Students scoring low on representational competence, as measured by the rubric, ignored important features of some representations or acknowledged them only superficially. Students scoring higher on representational competence made meaningful connections among representations. The more advanced students, those who rated highly on representational competence, tended to use their preferred representation in a heuristic manner to establish meaning for other representations. The more advanced students also reflected upon the problem at greater length before beginning work. Molecular level sketches seemed to be the most

Automatic frame-centered object representation and integration revealed by iconic memory, visual priming, and backward masking.

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Zhicheng; He, Sheng

2012-10-25

Object identities ("what") and their spatial locations ("where") are processed in distinct pathways in the visual system, raising the question of how the what and where information is integrated. Because of object motions and eye movements, the retina-based representations are unstable, necessitating nonretinotopic representation and integration. A potential mechanism is to code and update objects according to their reference frames (i.e., frame-centered representation and integration). To isolate frame-centered processes, in a frame-to-frame apparent motion configuration, we (a) presented two preceding or trailing objects on the same frame, equidistant from the target on the other frame, to control for object-based (frame-based) effect and space-based effect, and (b) manipulated the target's relative location within its frame to probe frame-centered effect. We show that iconic memory, visual priming, and backward masking depend on objects' relative frame locations, orthogonal of the retinotopic coordinate. These findings not only reveal that iconic memory, visual priming, and backward masking can be nonretinotopic but also demonstrate that these processes are automatically constrained by contextual frames through a frame-centered mechanism. Thus, object representation is robustly and automatically coupled to its reference frame and continuously being updated through a frame-centered, location-specific mechanism. These findings lead to an object cabinet framework, in which objects ("files") within the reference frame ("cabinet") are orderly coded relative to the frame.

A skin colour code for the Nigerian (Negroid) population | George ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Some researchers have codified various people of different racial and pigment backgrounds into skin types. The West African native population generally falls into type VI –least likely to burn. There is a need for skin colour code in a multiethnic country like Nigeria especially for the purpose of health matters. The human eye ...

Resistance to the political representation of alien populations: the European paradox.

Science.gov (United States)

Moulier-boutang, Y

1985-01-01

This article addresses the issue of the resistance of European nations to granting unnaturalized citizens the right to vote in local, regional, and national elections. It argues that this political inflexibility contrasts with the economic flexibility these nations demonstrated when they made a call for labor to overseas populations, former colonies, and other countries, and which they exhibit now as they work to modernize production systems in their industries. Because of this lack of political representation, local authorities have proven disinterested in migrants' concerns and migrants have become subjects of the labor market, rather than of the law. Overall "political underdevelopment" will only intensify the turbulence projected for Europe's economy.

Changes in the representation of women and minorities in biomedical careers.

Science.gov (United States)

Myers, Samuel L; Fealing, Kaye Husbands

2012-11-01

To examine how efforts and policies to increase diversity affect the relative representation of women and of minority groups within medicine and related science fields. The authors of this report used data from the Current Population Survey March Supplement (a product of the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics that tracks race, ethnicity, and employment) to compute the representation ratios of persons employed in biology, chemistry, and medicine from 1968 to 2009 (inclusive). They derived the representation ratios by computing the ratio of the conditional probability that a member of a given group is employed in a specific skilled science field to the overall probability of employment in that field. Their analysis tested for differences in representation ratios among racial, gender, and ethnic groups and across time among those employed as biologists, chemists, and medical doctors. Representation ratios rose for white females, whose percentage increase in medicine was larger than for any other racial/ethnic group. The representation ratios fell for Hispanics in biology, chemistry, and medicine. The representation ratio rose for African Americans, whose highest percentage increase occurred in biology. Asian Americans, who had the highest representation ratios in all three disciplines, saw a decline in their relative representation in medicine. The authors have demonstrated that all groups do not benefit equally from diversity initiatives and that competition across related fields can confound efforts to increase diversity in medicine.

Spike-based population coding and working memory.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Martin Boerlin

2011-02-01

Full Text Available Compelling behavioral evidence suggests that humans can make optimal decisions despite the uncertainty inherent in perceptual or motor tasks. A key question in neuroscience is how populations of spiking neurons can implement such probabilistic computations. In this article, we develop a comprehensive framework for optimal, spike-based sensory integration and working memory in a dynamic environment. We propose that probability distributions are inferred spike-per-spike in recurrently connected networks of integrate-and-fire neurons. As a result, these networks can combine sensory cues optimally, track the state of a time-varying stimulus and memorize accumulated evidence over periods much longer than the time constant of single neurons. Importantly, we propose that population responses and persistent working memory states represent entire probability distributions and not only single stimulus values. These memories are reflected by sustained, asynchronous patterns of activity which make relevant information available to downstream neurons within their short time window of integration. Model neurons act as predictive encoders, only firing spikes which account for new information that has not yet been signaled. Thus, spike times signal deterministically a prediction error, contrary to rate codes in which spike times are considered to be random samples of an underlying firing rate. As a consequence of this coding scheme, a multitude of spike patterns can reliably encode the same information. This results in weakly correlated, Poisson-like spike trains that are sensitive to initial conditions but robust to even high levels of external neural noise. This spike train variability reproduces the one observed in cortical sensory spike trains, but cannot be equated to noise. On the contrary, it is a consequence of optimal spike-based inference. In contrast, we show that rate-based models perform poorly when implemented with stochastically spiking neurons.

The Representation of Abstract Words: Why Emotion Matters

Science.gov (United States)

Kousta, Stavroula-Thaleia; Vigliocco, Gabriella; Vinson, David P.; Andrews, Mark; Del Campo, Elena

2011-01-01

Although much is known about the representation and processing of concrete concepts, knowledge of what abstract semantics might be is severely limited. In this article we first address the adequacy of the 2 dominant accounts (dual coding theory and the context availability model) put forward in order to explain representation and processing…

Factorizations and physical representations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Revzen, M; Khanna, F C; Mann, A; Zak, J

2006-01-01

A Hilbert space in M dimensions is shown explicitly to accommodate representations that reflect the decomposition of M into prime numbers. Representations that exhibit the factorization of M into two relatively prime numbers: the kq representation (Zak J 1970 Phys. Today 23 51), and related representations termed q 1 q 2 representations (together with their conjugates) are analysed, as well as a representation that exhibits the complete factorization of M. In this latter representation each quantum number varies in a subspace that is associated with one of the prime numbers that make up M

Entry format for representation of analytical relations on the ES computer

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Katan, I.B.; Sal'nikova, O.V.; Blokhin, A.I.

1981-01-01

Structure and description of an input format for representation of analytical relations on the ES compUter as well as dictionaries of key words and system identificators for thermal-physical and hydraulic data are presented. It is shown that the format considered can be the basis at the formation of library of analytical relations [ru

Bayesian analogy with relational transformations.

Science.gov (United States)

Lu, Hongjing; Chen, Dawn; Holyoak, Keith J

2012-07-01

How can humans acquire relational representations that enable analogical inference and other forms of high-level reasoning? Using comparative relations as a model domain, we explore the possibility that bottom-up learning mechanisms applied to objects coded as feature vectors can yield representations of relations sufficient to solve analogy problems. We introduce Bayesian analogy with relational transformations (BART) and apply the model to the task of learning first-order comparative relations (e.g., larger, smaller, fiercer, meeker) from a set of animal pairs. Inputs are coded by vectors of continuous-valued features, based either on human magnitude ratings, normed feature ratings (De Deyne et al., 2008), or outputs of the topics model (Griffiths, Steyvers, & Tenenbaum, 2007). Bootstrapping from empirical priors, the model is able to induce first-order relations represented as probabilistic weight distributions, even when given positive examples only. These learned representations allow classification of novel instantiations of the relations and yield a symbolic distance effect of the sort obtained with both humans and other primates. BART then transforms its learned weight distributions by importance-guided mapping, thereby placing distinct dimensions into correspondence. These transformed representations allow BART to reliably solve 4-term analogies (e.g., larger:smaller::fiercer:meeker), a type of reasoning that is arguably specific to humans. Our results provide a proof-of-concept that structured analogies can be solved with representations induced from unstructured feature vectors by mechanisms that operate in a largely bottom-up fashion. We discuss potential implications for algorithmic and neural models of relational thinking, as well as for the evolution of abstract thought. Copyright 2012 APA, all rights reserved.

Complex Visual Data Analysis, Uncertainty, and Representation

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Schunn, Christian D; Saner, Lelyn D; Kirschenbaum, Susan K; Trafton, J. G; Littleton, Eliza B

2007-01-01

... (weather forecasting, submarine target motion analysis, and fMRI data analysis). Internal spatial representations are coded from spontaneous gestures made during cued-recall summaries of problem solving activities...

RAMONA-3B/MINET composite representation of BWR thermal-hydraulic systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Van Tuyle, G.J.; Slovik, G.; Cazzoli, E.G.; Nepsee, T.C.; Guppy, J.G.

1985-01-01

The modification and interfacing of two computer codes, RAMONA-3B and MINET, for the thermal hydraulic transient analysis of a Boiling Water Reactor nuclear steam supply system, is described. The RAMONA-3B code provides for multi-channel thermal hydraulics and three-dimensional (or one-dimensional) neutron kinetics analysis of a boiling water reactor core. The RAMONA-3B system representation terminates at the end of the steam line and at the junction of the feedwater line at the vessel inlet. By interfacing RAMONA-3B with MINET, a generic balance-of-plant systems analysis code, a complete BWR systems code with detailed core modeling was obtained. The result is a code of particular importance to the analysis of transients such as ATWS. A comparison between the 3-D and 1-D neutronics representation is provided, along with a test case utilizing the composite RAMONA-3B/MINET code

Classification of multispectral or hyperspectral satellite imagery using clustering of sparse approximations on sparse representations in learned dictionaries obtained using efficient convolutional sparse coding

Science.gov (United States)

Moody, Daniela; Wohlberg, Brendt

2018-01-02

An approach for land cover classification, seasonal and yearly change detection and monitoring, and identification of changes in man-made features may use a clustering of sparse approximations (CoSA) on sparse representations in learned dictionaries. The learned dictionaries may be derived using efficient convolutional sparse coding to build multispectral or hyperspectral, multiresolution dictionaries that are adapted to regional satellite image data. Sparse image representations of images over the learned dictionaries may be used to perform unsupervised k-means clustering into land cover categories. The clustering process behaves as a classifier in detecting real variability. This approach may combine spectral and spatial textural characteristics to detect geologic, vegetative, hydrologic, and man-made features, as well as changes in these features over time.

Relating quantum discord with the quantum dense coding capacity

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Wang, Xin; Qiu, Liang, E-mail: lqiu@cumt.edu.cn; Li, Song; Zhang, Chi [China University of Mining and Technology, School of Sciences (China); Ye, Bin [China University of Mining and Technology, School of Information and Electrical Engineering (China)

2015-01-15

We establish the relations between quantum discord and the quantum dense coding capacity in (n + 1)-particle quantum states. A necessary condition for the vanishing discord monogamy score is given. We also find that the loss of quantum dense coding capacity due to decoherence is bounded below by the sum of quantum discord. When these results are restricted to three-particle quantum states, some complementarity relations are obtained.

Relating quantum discord with the quantum dense coding capacity

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang, Xin; Qiu, Liang; Li, Song; Zhang, Chi; Ye, Bin

2015-01-01

We establish the relations between quantum discord and the quantum dense coding capacity in (n + 1)-particle quantum states. A necessary condition for the vanishing discord monogamy score is given. We also find that the loss of quantum dense coding capacity due to decoherence is bounded below by the sum of quantum discord. When these results are restricted to three-particle quantum states, some complementarity relations are obtained

Blocks of tame representation type and related algebras

CERN Document Server

Erdmann, Karin

1990-01-01

This monograph studies algebras that are associated to blocks of tame representation type. Over the past few years, a range of new results have been obtained and a comprehensive account of these is provided here to- gether with some new proofs of known results. Some general theory of algebras is also presented, as a means of understanding the subject. The book is addressed to researchers and graduate students interested in the links between representations of finite-dimensional algebras and modular group representation theory. The basic properties of modules and finite-dimensional algebras are assumed known.

Binary Linear-Time Erasure Decoding for Non-Binary LDPC codes

OpenAIRE

Savin, Valentin

2009-01-01

In this paper, we first introduce the extended binary representation of non-binary codes, which corresponds to a covering graph of the bipartite graph associated with the non-binary code. Then we show that non-binary codewords correspond to binary codewords of the extended representation that further satisfy some simplex-constraint: that is, bits lying over the same symbol-node of the non-binary graph must form a codeword of a simplex code. Applied to the binary erasure channel, this descript...

A polygon soup representation for free viewpoint video

Science.gov (United States)

Colleu, T.; Pateux, S.; Morin, L.; Labit, C.

2010-02-01

This paper presents a polygon soup representation for multiview data. Starting from a sequence of multi-view video plus depth (MVD) data, the proposed representation takes into account, in a unified manner, different issues such as compactness, compression, and intermediate view synthesis. The representation is built in two steps. First, a set of 3D quads is extracted using a quadtree decomposition of the depth maps. Second, a selective elimination of the quads is performed in order to reduce inter-view redundancies and thus provide a compact representation. Moreover, the proposed methodology for extracting the representation allows to reduce ghosting artifacts. Finally, an adapted compression technique is proposed that limits coding artifacts. The results presented on two real sequences show that the proposed representation provides a good trade-off between rendering quality and data compactness.

Input/output manual of light water reactor fuel performance code FEMAXI-7 and its related codes

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Suzuki, Motoe; Udagawa, Yutaka; Nagase, Fumihisa [Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Safety Research Center, Tokai, Ibaraki (Japan); Saitou, Hiroaki [ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corp., Tokyo (Japan)

2012-07-15

A light water reactor fuel analysis code FEMAXI-7 has been developed for the purpose of analyzing the fuel behavior in normal conditions and in anticipated transient conditions. Numerous functional improvements and extensions have been incorporated in FEMAXI-7, which has been fully disclosed in the code model description published recently as JAEA-Data/Code 2010-035. The present manual, which is the counterpart of this description, gives detailed explanations of operation method of FEMAXI-7 code and its related codes, methods of Input/Output, methods of source code modification, features of subroutine modules, and internal variables in a specific manner in order to facilitate users to perform a fuel analysis with FEMAXI-7. This report includes some descriptions which are modified from the original contents of JAEA-Data/Code 2010-035. A CD-ROM is attached as an appendix. (author)

Input/output manual of light water reactor fuel performance code FEMAXI-7 and its related codes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Suzuki, Motoe; Udagawa, Yutaka; Nagase, Fumihisa; Saitou, Hiroaki

2012-07-01

A light water reactor fuel analysis code FEMAXI-7 has been developed for the purpose of analyzing the fuel behavior in normal conditions and in anticipated transient conditions. Numerous functional improvements and extensions have been incorporated in FEMAXI-7, which has been fully disclosed in the code model description published recently as JAEA-Data/Code 2010-035. The present manual, which is the counterpart of this description, gives detailed explanations of operation method of FEMAXI-7 code and its related codes, methods of Input/Output, methods of source code modification, features of subroutine modules, and internal variables in a specific manner in order to facilitate users to perform a fuel analysis with FEMAXI-7. This report includes some descriptions which are modified from the original contents of JAEA-Data/Code 2010-035. A CD-ROM is attached as an appendix. (author)

Consuming Ecstasy: Representations of Male and Female Orgasm in Mainstream Pornography.

Science.gov (United States)

Séguin, Léa J; Rodrigue, Carl; Lavigne, Julie

2018-01-01

Social representations, which appear in a variety of media, can influence the way sexual experiences are perceived and understood. While pornography is not the only medium in which orgasm is portrayed, it is the most explicit, and it is widespread and easily accessible. As such, pornography is an ideal medium for examining representations of male and female orgasm. PornHub's 50 most viewed videos of all time were viewed and coded for the frequency of male and female orgasm, orgasm-inducing sex acts (and whether activity inducing female orgasms included some form of clitoral stimulation), and auditory (verbal, vocal) and visual (bodily) indicators of orgasm. Content analysis was used to code and analyze the data. Results were analyzed in light of sexual script theory and previous orgasm research. Only 18.3% of women, compared to 78.0% of men, were shown reaching orgasm. Sex differences in depictions of orgasm, beyond the appearance of semen, were documented. Results support the male performance script as evident in pornographic depictions of orgasm, as well as coital and orgasm imperatives. As a result, representations of male and female orgasm in mainstream pornography may serve to perpetuate unrealistic beliefs and expectations in relation to female orgasm and male sexual performance.

Semantic representations in the temporal pole predict false memories.

Science.gov (United States)

Chadwick, Martin J; Anjum, Raeesa S; Kumaran, Dharshan; Schacter, Daniel L; Spiers, Hugo J; Hassabis, Demis

2016-09-06

Recent advances in neuroscience have given us unprecedented insight into the neural mechanisms of false memory, showing that artificial memories can be inserted into the memory cells of the hippocampus in a way that is indistinguishable from true memories. However, this alone is not enough to explain how false memories can arise naturally in the course of our daily lives. Cognitive psychology has demonstrated that many instances of false memory, both in the laboratory and the real world, can be attributed to semantic interference. Whereas previous studies have found that a diverse set of regions show some involvement in semantic false memory, none have revealed the nature of the semantic representations underpinning the phenomenon. Here we use fMRI with representational similarity analysis to search for a neural code consistent with semantic false memory. We find clear evidence that false memories emerge from a similarity-based neural code in the temporal pole, a region that has been called the "semantic hub" of the brain. We further show that each individual has a partially unique semantic code within the temporal pole, and this unique code can predict idiosyncratic patterns of memory errors. Finally, we show that the same neural code can also predict variation in true-memory performance, consistent with an adaptive perspective on false memory. Taken together, our findings reveal the underlying structure of neural representations of semantic knowledge, and how this semantic structure can both enhance and distort our memories.

Semantic representations in the temporal pole predict false memories

Science.gov (United States)

Chadwick, Martin J.; Anjum, Raeesa S.; Kumaran, Dharshan; Schacter, Daniel L.; Spiers, Hugo J.; Hassabis, Demis

2016-01-01

Recent advances in neuroscience have given us unprecedented insight into the neural mechanisms of false memory, showing that artificial memories can be inserted into the memory cells of the hippocampus in a way that is indistinguishable from true memories. However, this alone is not enough to explain how false memories can arise naturally in the course of our daily lives. Cognitive psychology has demonstrated that many instances of false memory, both in the laboratory and the real world, can be attributed to semantic interference. Whereas previous studies have found that a diverse set of regions show some involvement in semantic false memory, none have revealed the nature of the semantic representations underpinning the phenomenon. Here we use fMRI with representational similarity analysis to search for a neural code consistent with semantic false memory. We find clear evidence that false memories emerge from a similarity-based neural code in the temporal pole, a region that has been called the “semantic hub” of the brain. We further show that each individual has a partially unique semantic code within the temporal pole, and this unique code can predict idiosyncratic patterns of memory errors. Finally, we show that the same neural code can also predict variation in true-memory performance, consistent with an adaptive perspective on false memory. Taken together, our findings reveal the underlying structure of neural representations of semantic knowledge, and how this semantic structure can both enhance and distort our memories. PMID:27551087

Collection of regulatory texts relative to radiation protection. Part 2: orders and decisions taken in application of the Public Health Code and Labour Code concerning the protection of populations, patients and workers against the risks of ionizing radiations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2007-05-01

This collection of texts includes the general measures of population protection, exposure to natural radiations, general system of authorizations and statements, protection of persons exposed to ionizing radiations for medical purpose, situations of radiological emergency and long exposure to ionizing radiations, penal dispositions, application of the Public Health code and application of the Labour code. Chronological contents by date of publication is given. (N.C.)

Covariant representations of nuclear *-algebras

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Moore, S.M.

1978-01-01

Extensions of the Csup(*)-algebra theory for covariant representations to nuclear *-algebra are considered. Irreducible covariant representations are essentially unique, an invariant state produces a covariant representation with stable vacuum, and the usual relation between ergodic states and covariant representations holds. There exist construction and decomposition theorems and a possible relation between derivations and covariant representations

NoGOA: predicting noisy GO annotations using evidences and sparse representation.

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Guoxian; Lu, Chang; Wang, Jun

2017-07-21

Gene Ontology (GO) is a community effort to represent functional features of gene products. GO annotations (GOA) provide functional associations between GO terms and gene products. Due to resources limitation, only a small portion of annotations are manually checked by curators, and the others are electronically inferred. Although quality control techniques have been applied to ensure the quality of annotations, the community consistently report that there are still considerable noisy (or incorrect) annotations. Given the wide application of annotations, however, how to identify noisy annotations is an important but yet seldom studied open problem. We introduce a novel approach called NoGOA to predict noisy annotations. NoGOA applies sparse representation on the gene-term association matrix to reduce the impact of noisy annotations, and takes advantage of sparse representation coefficients to measure the semantic similarity between genes. Secondly, it preliminarily predicts noisy annotations of a gene based on aggregated votes from semantic neighborhood genes of that gene. Next, NoGOA estimates the ratio of noisy annotations for each evidence code based on direct annotations in GOA files archived on different periods, and then weights entries of the association matrix via estimated ratios and propagates weights to ancestors of direct annotations using GO hierarchy. Finally, it integrates evidence-weighted association matrix and aggregated votes to predict noisy annotations. Experiments on archived GOA files of six model species (H. sapiens, A. thaliana, S. cerevisiae, G. gallus, B. Taurus and M. musculus) demonstrate that NoGOA achieves significantly better results than other related methods and removing noisy annotations improves the performance of gene function prediction. The comparative study justifies the effectiveness of integrating evidence codes with sparse representation for predicting noisy GO annotations. Codes and datasets are available at http://mlda.swu.edu.cn/codes.php?name=NoGOA .

Input/output manual of light water reactor fuel analysis code FEMAXI-7 and its related codes

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Suzuki, Motoe; Udagawa, Yutaka; Nagase, Fumihisa [Japan Atomic Energy Agency, Nuclear Safety Research Center, Tokai, Ibaraki (Japan); Saitou, Hiroaki [ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation, Tokyo (Japan)

2013-10-15

A light water reactor fuel analysis code FEMAXI-7 has been developed, as an extended version from the former version FEMAXI-6, for the purpose of analyzing the fuel behavior in normal conditions and in anticipated transient conditions. Numerous functional improvements and extensions have been incorporated in FEMAXI-7, which are fully disclosed in the code model description published in the form of another JAEA-Data/Code report. The present manual, which is the very counterpart of this description document, gives detailed explanations of files and operation method of FEMAXI-7 code and its related codes, methods of input/output, sample Input/Output, methods of source code modification, subroutine structure, and internal variables in a specific manner in order to facilitate users to perform fuel analysis by FEMAXI-7. (author)

Input/output manual of light water reactor fuel analysis code FEMAXI-7 and its related codes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Suzuki, Motoe; Udagawa, Yutaka; Nagase, Fumihisa; Saitou, Hiroaki

2013-10-01

A light water reactor fuel analysis code FEMAXI-7 has been developed, as an extended version from the former version FEMAXI-6, for the purpose of analyzing the fuel behavior in normal conditions and in anticipated transient conditions. Numerous functional improvements and extensions have been incorporated in FEMAXI-7, which are fully disclosed in the code model description published in the form of another JAEA-Data/Code report. The present manual, which is the very counterpart of this description document, gives detailed explanations of files and operation method of FEMAXI-7 code and its related codes, methods of input/output, sample Input/Output, methods of source code modification, subroutine structure, and internal variables in a specific manner in order to facilitate users to perform fuel analysis by FEMAXI-7. (author)

General Monte Carlo code MONK

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Moore, J.G.

1974-01-01

The Monte Carlo code MONK is a general program written to provide a high degree of flexibility to the user. MONK is distinguished by its detailed representation of nuclear data in point form i.e., the cross-section is tabulated at specific energies instead of the more usual group representation. The nuclear data are unadjusted in the point form but recently the code has been modified to accept adjusted group data as used in fast and thermal reactor applications. The various geometrical handling capabilities and importance sampling techniques are described. In addition to the nuclear data aspects, the following features are also described; geometrical handling routines, tracking cycles, neutron source and output facilities. 12 references. (U.S.)

Educating "The Simpsons": Teaching Queer Representations in Contemporary Visual Media

Science.gov (United States)

Padva, Gilad

2008-01-01

This article analyzes queer representation in contemporary visual media and examines how the episode "Homer's Phobia" from Matt Groening's animation series "The Simpsons" can be used to deconstruct hetero- and homo-sexual codes of behavior, socialization, articulation, representation and visibility. The analysis is contextualized in the…

Feature selection and multi-kernel learning for sparse representation on a manifold

KAUST Repository

Wang, Jim Jing-Yan

2014-03-01

Sparse representation has been widely studied as a part-based data representation method and applied in many scientific and engineering fields, such as bioinformatics and medical imaging. It seeks to represent a data sample as a sparse linear combination of some basic items in a dictionary. Gao etal. (2013) recently proposed Laplacian sparse coding by regularizing the sparse codes with an affinity graph. However, due to the noisy features and nonlinear distribution of the data samples, the affinity graph constructed directly from the original feature space is not necessarily a reliable reflection of the intrinsic manifold of the data samples. To overcome this problem, we integrate feature selection and multiple kernel learning into the sparse coding on the manifold. To this end, unified objectives are defined for feature selection, multiple kernel learning, sparse coding, and graph regularization. By optimizing the objective functions iteratively, we develop novel data representation algorithms with feature selection and multiple kernel learning respectively. Experimental results on two challenging tasks, N-linked glycosylation prediction and mammogram retrieval, demonstrate that the proposed algorithms outperform the traditional sparse coding methods. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

Feature selection and multi-kernel learning for sparse representation on a manifold.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Jim Jing-Yan; Bensmail, Halima; Gao, Xin

2014-03-01

Sparse representation has been widely studied as a part-based data representation method and applied in many scientific and engineering fields, such as bioinformatics and medical imaging. It seeks to represent a data sample as a sparse linear combination of some basic items in a dictionary. Gao et al. (2013) recently proposed Laplacian sparse coding by regularizing the sparse codes with an affinity graph. However, due to the noisy features and nonlinear distribution of the data samples, the affinity graph constructed directly from the original feature space is not necessarily a reliable reflection of the intrinsic manifold of the data samples. To overcome this problem, we integrate feature selection and multiple kernel learning into the sparse coding on the manifold. To this end, unified objectives are defined for feature selection, multiple kernel learning, sparse coding, and graph regularization. By optimizing the objective functions iteratively, we develop novel data representation algorithms with feature selection and multiple kernel learning respectively. Experimental results on two challenging tasks, N-linked glycosylation prediction and mammogram retrieval, demonstrate that the proposed algorithms outperform the traditional sparse coding methods. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Osteoporosis-related fracture case definitions for population-based administrative data

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lix Lisa M

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Population-based administrative data have been used to study osteoporosis-related fracture risk factors and outcomes, but there has been limited research about the validity of these data for ascertaining fracture cases. The objectives of this study were to: (a compare fracture incidence estimates from administrative data with estimates from population-based clinically-validated data, and (b test for differences in incidence estimates from multiple administrative data case definitions. Methods Thirty-five case definitions for incident fractures of the hip, wrist, humerus, and clinical vertebrae were constructed using diagnosis codes in hospital data and diagnosis and service codes in physician billing data from Manitoba, Canada. Clinically-validated fractures were identified from the Canadian Multicentre Osteoporosis Study (CaMos. Generalized linear models were used to test for differences in incidence estimates. Results For hip fracture, sex-specific differences were observed in the magnitude of under- and over-ascertainment of administrative data case definitions when compared with CaMos data. The length of the fracture-free period to ascertain incident cases had a variable effect on over-ascertainment across fracture sites, as did the use of imaging, fixation, or repair service codes. Case definitions based on hospital data resulted in under-ascertainment of incident clinical vertebral fractures. There were no significant differences in trend estimates for wrist, humerus, and clinical vertebral case definitions. Conclusions The validity of administrative data for estimating fracture incidence depends on the site and features of the case definition.

Standardized Semantic Markup for Reference Terminologies, Thesauri and Coding Systems: Benefits for distributed E-Health Applications.

Science.gov (United States)

Hoelzer, Simon; Schweiger, Ralf K; Liu, Raymond; Rudolf, Dirk; Rieger, Joerg; Dudeck, Joachim

2005-01-01

With the introduction of the ICD-10 as the standard for diagnosis, the development of an electronic representation of its complete content, inherent semantics and coding rules is necessary. Our concept refers to current efforts of the CEN/TC 251 to establish a European standard for hierarchical classification systems in healthcare. We have developed an electronic representation of the ICD-10 with the extensible Markup Language (XML) that facilitates the integration in current information systems or coding software taking into account different languages and versions. In this context, XML offers a complete framework of related technologies and standard tools for processing that helps to develop interoperable applications.

On the Representation of the Porosity-Pressure Relationship in General Subsurface Flow Codes

Science.gov (United States)

Birdsell, Daniel T.; Karra, Satish; Rajaram, Harihar

2018-02-01

The governing equations for subsurface flow codes in a deformable porous media are derived from the balance of fluid mass and Darcy's equation. One class of these codes, which we call general subsurface flow codes (GSFs), allow for more general constitutive relations for material properties such as porosity, permeability and density. Examples of GSFs include PFLOTRAN, FEHM, TOUGH2, STOMP, and some reservoir simulators such as BOAST. Depending on the constitutive relations used in GSFs, an inconsistency arises between the standard groundwater flow equation and the governing equation of GSFs, and we clarify that the reason for this inconsistency is because the Darcy's equation used in the GSFs should account for the velocity of fluid with respect to solid. Due to lack of awareness of this inconsistency, users of the GSFs tend to use a porosity-pressure relationship that comes from the standard groundwater flow equation and assumes that the relative velocity is already accounted for. For the Theis problem, we show that using this traditional relationship in the GSFs leads to significantly large errors. We propose an alternate porosity-pressure relationship that is consistent with the derivation of the governing equations in the GSFs where the solid velocity is not tracked, and show that, with this relationship, the results are more accurate for the Theis problem. The purpose of this note is to make the users and developers of these GSFs aware of this inconsistency and to advocate that the alternate porosity model derived here should be incorporated in GSFs.

Relations between maternal attachment representations and the quality of mother-infant interaction in preterm and full-term infants.

Science.gov (United States)

Korja, Riikka; Ahlqvist-Björkroth, Sari; Savonlahti, Elina; Stolt, Suvi; Haataja, Leena; Lapinleimu, Helena; Piha, Jorma; Lehtonen, Liisa

2010-06-01

The aim of the study was to assess the relationship between maternal representations and the quality of mother-infant interaction in a group of preterm and full-term infants. The study groups consisted of 38 mothers and their preterm infants (quality of mother-infant interaction was studied using the Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment (PCERA) method at 6 and 12 months of the infant's corrected age. The results showed that maternal representations are related to the quality of mother-infant interaction in a parallel manner in preterm and full-term infants and their mothers. Furthermore, distorted representations were more strongly related to a higher number of areas of concern in mother-infant interaction than other representation classifications. Our results underline the importance of combined assessment of the subjective experiences of the mother and the quality of mother-infant interaction in clinical follow-up. This is the first study to describe the relation between maternal attachment representations and the quality of mother-infant interaction involving preterm infants. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Relations between representational consistency, conceptual understanding of the force concept, and scientific reasoning

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Pasi Nieminen

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Previous physics education research has raised the question of “hidden variables” behind students’ success in learning certain concepts. In the context of the force concept, it has been suggested that students’ reasoning ability is one such variable. Strong positive correlations between students’ preinstruction scores for reasoning ability (measured by Lawson’s Classroom Test of Scientific Reasoning and their learning of forces [measured by the Force Concept Inventory (FCI] have been reported in high school and university introductory courses. However, there is no published research concerning the relation between students’ ability to interpret multiple representations consistently (i.e., representational consistency and their learning of forces. To investigate this, we collected 131 high school students’ pre- and post-test data of the Representational Variant of the Force Concept Inventory (for representational consistency and the FCI. The students’ Lawson pretest data were also collected. We found that the preinstruction level of students’ representational consistency correlated strongly with student learning gain of forces. The correlation (0.51 was almost equal to the correlation between Lawson prescore and learning gain of forces (0.52. Our results support earlier findings which suggest that scientific reasoning ability is a hidden variable behind the learning of forces. In addition, we suggest that students’ representational consistency may also be such a factor, and that this should be recognized in physics teaching.

Note related to the elaboration of a coding by key sentences for the programming of a document automatic selection system

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Leroy, A.; Braffort, P.

1959-01-01

This note deals with the providing of CEA documentalists with a tool for coding studies. The authors first discuss issues related to code selection criteria (author classification, topic classification, and so on), and propose an overview and a discussion of linguistic models. They also comment how diagrams illustrating relationships between words are built up, and propose a diagram representation example which includes different concepts such as conditions, properties, object, tools or processes (for example hardness for a steel, batch processing for a condition, or sintering for a process), and also the introduction of negation. Then, the authors address how basic concepts can be highlighted, describe how key sentences can be built up, and propose an example analysis in the case of a published article dealing with nuclear reactors (in this case, the study of a liquid-metal neutron absorber for the control of a gas-cooled power reactor). Perspectives of evolution are finally discussed

A representation of the exchange relation for affine Toda field theory

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Corrigan, E.; Dorey, P.E.

1991-01-01

Vertex operators are constructed providing representations of the exchange relations containing either the S-matrix of a real coupling (simply-laced) affine Toda field theory, or its minimal counterpart. One feature of the construction is that the bootstrap relations for the S-matrices follow automatically from those for the conserved quantities, via an algebraic interpretation of the fusing of two particles to form a single bound state. (orig.)

A precise form of divisive suppression supports population coding in the primary visual cortex.

Science.gov (United States)

MacEvoy, Sean P; Tucker, Thomas R; Fitzpatrick, David

2009-05-01

The responses of neurons in the primary visual cortex (V1) to an optimally oriented grating are suppressed when a non-optimal grating is superimposed. Although cross-orientation suppression is thought to reflect mechanisms that maintain a distributed code for orientation, the effect of superimposed gratings on V1 population responses is unknown. Using intrinsic signal optical imaging, we found that patterns of tree shrew V1 activity evoked by superimposed equal-contrast gratings were predicted by the averages of patterns evoked by individual component gratings. This prediction held across contrasts, for summed sinusoidal gratings or nonsumming square-wave gratings, and was evident in single-unit extracellular recordings. Intracellular recordings revealed consistent levels of suppression throughout the time course of subthreshold responses. These results indicate that divisive suppression powerfully governs population responses to multiple orientations. Moreover, the specific form of suppression that we observed appears to support independent population codes for stimulus orientation and strength and calls for a reassessment of mechanisms that underlie cross-orientation suppression.

On Coding Non-Contiguous Letter Combinations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Frédéric eDandurand

2011-06-01

Full Text Available Starting from the hypothesis that printed word identification initially involves the parallel mapping of visual features onto location-specific letter identities, we analyze the type of information that would be involved in optimally mapping this location-specific orthographic code onto a location-invariant lexical code. We assume that some intermediate level of coding exists between individual letters and whole words, and that this involves the representation of letter combinations. We then investigate the nature of this intermediate level of coding given the constraints of optimality. This intermediate level of coding is expected to compress data while retaining as much information as possible about word identity. Information conveyed by letters is a function of how much they constrain word identity and how visible they are. Optimization of this coding is a combination of minimizing resources (using the most compact representations and maximizing information. We show that in a large proportion of cases, non-contiguous letter sequences contain more information than contiguous sequences, while at the same time requiring less precise coding. Moreover, we found that the best predictor of human performance in orthographic priming experiments was within-word ranking of conditional probabilities, rather than average conditional probabilities. We conclude that from an optimality perspective, readers learn to select certain contiguous and non-contiguous letter combinations as information that provides the best cue to word identity.

Transformation-invariant visual representations in self-organizing spiking neural networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Evans, Benjamin D; Stringer, Simon M

2012-01-01

The ventral visual pathway achieves object and face recognition by building transformation-invariant representations from elementary visual features. In previous computer simulation studies with rate-coded neural networks, the development of transformation-invariant representations has been demonstrated using either of two biologically plausible learning mechanisms, Trace learning and Continuous Transformation (CT) learning. However, it has not previously been investigated how transformation-invariant representations may be learned in a more biologically accurate spiking neural network. A key issue is how the synaptic connection strengths in such a spiking network might self-organize through Spike-Time Dependent Plasticity (STDP) where the change in synaptic strength is dependent on the relative times of the spikes emitted by the presynaptic and postsynaptic neurons rather than simply correlated activity driving changes in synaptic efficacy. Here we present simulations with conductance-based integrate-and-fire (IF) neurons using a STDP learning rule to address these gaps in our understanding. It is demonstrated that with the appropriate selection of model parameters and training regime, the spiking network model can utilize either Trace-like or CT-like learning mechanisms to achieve transform-invariant representations.

Transform-invariant visual representations in self-organizing spiking neural networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Benjamin eEvans

2012-07-01

Full Text Available The ventral visual pathway achieves object and face recognition by building transform-invariant representations from elementary visual features. In previous computer simulation studies with rate-coded neural networks, the development of transform invariant representations has been demonstrated using either of two biologically plausible learning mechanisms, Trace learning and Continuous Transformation (CT learning. However, it has not previously been investigated how transform invariant representations may be learned in a more biologically accurate spiking neural network. A key issue is how the synaptic connection strengths in such a spiking network might self-organize through Spike-Time Dependent Plasticity (STDP where the change in synaptic strength is dependent on the relative times of the spikes emitted by the pre- and postsynaptic neurons rather than simply correlated activity driving changes in synaptic efficacy. Here we present simulations with conductance-based integrate-and-fire (IF neurons using a STDP learning rule to address these gaps in our understanding. It is demonstrated that with the appropriate selection of model pa- rameters and training regime, the spiking network model can utilize either Trace-like or CT-like learning mechanisms to achieve transform-invariant representations.

Dissociating the Representation of Action- and Sound-Related Concepts in Middle Temporal Cortex

Science.gov (United States)

Kiefer, Markus; Trumpp, Natalie; Herrnberger, Barbel; Sim, Eun-Jin; Hoenig, Klaus; Pulvermuller, Friedemann

2012-01-01

Modality-specific models of conceptual memory propose close links between concepts and the sensory-motor systems. Neuroimaging studies found, in different subject groups, that action-related and sound-related concepts activated different parts of posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG), suggesting a modality-specific representation of conceptual…

Locations of serial reach targets are coded in multiple reference frames.

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Aidan A; Henriques, Denise Y P

2010-12-01

Previous work from our lab, and elsewhere, has demonstrated that remembered target locations are stored and updated in an eye-fixed reference frame. That is, reach errors systematically vary as a function of gaze direction relative to a remembered target location, not only when the target is viewed in the periphery (Bock, 1986, known as the retinal magnification effect), but also when the target has been foveated, and the eyes subsequently move after the target has disappeared but prior to reaching (e.g., Henriques, Klier, Smith, Lowy, & Crawford, 1998; Sorrento & Henriques, 2008; Thompson & Henriques, 2008). These gaze-dependent errors, following intervening eye movements, cannot be explained by representations whose frame is fixed to the head, body or even the world. However, it is unknown whether targets presented sequentially would all be coded relative to gaze (i.e., egocentrically/absolutely), or if they would be coded relative to the previous target (i.e., allocentrically/relatively). It might be expected that the reaching movements to two targets separated by 5° would differ by that distance. But, if gaze were to shift between the first and second reaches, would the movement amplitude between the targets differ? If the target locations are coded allocentrically (i.e., the location of the second target coded relative to the first) then the movement amplitude should be about 5°. But, if the second target is coded egocentrically (i.e., relative to current gaze direction), then the reaches to this target and the distances between the subsequent movements should vary systematically with gaze as described above. We found that requiring an intervening saccade to the opposite side of 2 briefly presented targets between reaches to them resulted in a pattern of reaching error that systematically varied as a function of the distance between current gaze and target, and led to a systematic change in the distance between the sequential reach endpoints as predicted by

Mirror representations innate versus determined by experience: a viewpoint from learning theory.

Science.gov (United States)

Giese, Martin A

2014-04-01

From the viewpoint of pattern recognition and computational learning, mirror neurons form an interesting multimodal representation that links action perception and planning. While it seems unlikely that all details of such representations are specified by the genetic code, robust learning of such complex representations likely requires an appropriate interplay between plasticity, generalization, and anatomical constraints of the underlying neural architecture.

Essay: A Complicated Relationship: Right-Wing Populism, Media Representation and Journalism Theory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kai Hafez

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The current upswing of right-wing populism in the United States and in Europe is a challenge not only for policy makers, but also for journalism theory. If and how to report on right-wing politicians, movements and issues is a delicate question that various strands of theory answer differently. Functionalist systems theory is in favor of large-scale coverage due to the stimulating news values of populist debates, although the precise character of the political integration remains unclear. In contrast, rational democratic deliberation theory is to be interpreted as a complete rebuttal of the irrational character of populism. The argument here would be that we must not allow the media be dominated by irrational debates. At the same time, democratic media theory is all but uniform in dealing with the phenomenon. While traditional rational public sphere theory is clearly anti-populist, paradoxically left-liberal and postmodern public sphere theory, anti-elitist and radically post-modern as it is, can be used as an argument for better representation of marginalized voices, including right-wing populists.

O2-GIDNC: Beyond instantly decodable network coding

KAUST Repository

Aboutorab, Neda; Sorour, Sameh; Sadeghi, Parastoo

2013-01-01

In this paper, we are concerned with extending the graph representation of generalized instantly decodable network coding (GIDNC) to a more general opportunistic network coding (ONC) scenario, referred to as order-2 GIDNC (O2-GIDNC). In the O2-GIDNC

Synaptic learning rules and sparse coding in a model sensory system.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luca A Finelli

2008-04-01

Full Text Available Neural circuits exploit numerous strategies for encoding information. Although the functional significance of individual coding mechanisms has been investigated, ways in which multiple mechanisms interact and integrate are not well understood. The locust olfactory system, in which dense, transiently synchronized spike trains across ensembles of antenna lobe (AL neurons are transformed into a sparse representation in the mushroom body (MB; a region associated with memory, provides a well-studied preparation for investigating the interaction of multiple coding mechanisms. Recordings made in vivo from the insect MB demonstrated highly specific responses to odors in Kenyon cells (KCs. Typically, only a few KCs from the recorded population of neurons responded reliably when a specific odor was presented. Different odors induced responses in different KCs. Here, we explored with a biologically plausible model the possibility that a form of plasticity may control and tune synaptic weights of inputs to the mushroom body to ensure the specificity of KCs' responses to familiar or meaningful odors. We found that plasticity at the synapses between the AL and the MB efficiently regulated the delicate tuning necessary to selectively filter the intense AL oscillatory output and condense it to a sparse representation in the MB. Activity-dependent plasticity drove the observed specificity, reliability, and expected persistence of odor representations, suggesting a role for plasticity in information processing and making a testable prediction about synaptic plasticity at AL-MB synapses.

Action and perception in literacy: A common-code for spelling and reading.

Science.gov (United States)

Houghton, George

2018-01-01

There is strong evidence that reading and spelling in alphabetical scripts depend on a shared representation (common-coding). However, computational models usually treat the two skills separately, producing a wide variety of proposals as to how the identity and position of letters is represented. This article treats reading and spelling in terms of the common-coding hypothesis for perception-action coupling. Empirical evidence for common representations in spelling-reading is reviewed. A novel version of the Start-End Competitive Queuing (SE-CQ) spelling model is introduced, and tested against the distribution of positional errors in Letter Position Dysgraphia, data from intralist intrusion errors in spelling to dictation, and dysgraphia because of nonperipheral neglect. It is argued that no other current model is equally capable of explaining this range of data. To pursue the common-coding hypothesis, the representation used in SE-CQ is applied, without modification, to the coding of letter identity and position for reading and lexical access, and a lexical matching rule for the representation is proposed (Start End Position Code model, SE-PC). Simulations show the model's compatibility with benchmark findings from form priming, its ability to account for positional effects in letter identification priming and the positional distribution of perseverative intrusion errors. The model supports the view that spelling and reading use a common orthographic description, providing a well-defined account of the major features of this representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Behavioral correlates of the distributed coding of spatial context.

Science.gov (United States)

Anderson, Michael I; Killing, Sarah; Morris, Caitlin; O'Donoghue, Alan; Onyiagha, Dikennam; Stevenson, Rosemary; Verriotis, Madeleine; Jeffery, Kathryn J

2006-01-01

Hippocampal place cells respond heterogeneously to elemental changes of a compound spatial context, suggesting that they form a distributed code of context, whereby context information is shared across a population of neurons. The question arises as to what this distributed code might be useful for. The present study explored two possibilities: one, that it allows contexts with common elements to be disambiguated, and the other, that it allows a given context to be associated with more than one outcome. We used two naturalistic measures of context processing in rats, rearing and thigmotaxis (boundary-hugging), to explore how rats responded to contextual novelty and to relate this to the behavior of place cells. In experiment 1, rats showed dishabituation of rearing to a novel reconfiguration of familiar context elements, suggesting that they perceived the reconfiguration as novel, a behavior that parallels that of place cells in a similar situation. In experiment 2, rats were trained in a place preference task on an open-field arena. A change in the arena context triggered renewed thigmotaxis, and yet navigation continued unimpaired, indicating simultaneous representation of both the altered contextual and constant spatial cues. Place cells similarly exhibited a dual population of responses, consistent with the hypothesis that their activity underlies spatial behavior. Together, these experiments suggest that heterogeneous context encoding (or "partial remapping") by place cells may function to allow the flexible assignment of associations to contexts, a faculty that could be useful in episodic memory encoding. Copyright (c) 2006 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Asymmetric coding of categorical spatial relations in both language and vision.

OpenAIRE

Jessica eRoth; Steven eFranconeri

2012-01-01

Describing certain types of spatial relationships between a pair of objects requires that the objects are assigned different “roles” in the relation, e.g., “A is above B” is different than “B is above A.” This asymmetric representation places one object in the “target” or “figure” role and the other in the “reference” or “ground” role. Here we provide evidence that this asymmetry may be present not just in spatial language, but also in perceptual representations. More specifically, we describ...

RISKAP: a computer code for analysis of increased risk to arbitrary populations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Leggett, R.W.

1986-06-01

The computer code RISKAP is used to estimate risk to a population exposed to radioactivity. Risk is measured in terms of the expected number of premature deaths resulting from radiogenic cancers, the number of years of life lost as a result of these deaths, and the average number of years of life lost per premature death. Radiation doses are used to compute an annual, age-specific risk of premature cancer death, based on a dose-response function selected by the user. Calculations of premature radiation deaths, deaths from all causes, and the new age distribution of the population are performed for one-year intervals. RISKAP has been designed to accommodate latency and plateau periods that vary with age at exposure and risk functions that vary with age at exposure as well as time after exposure. RISKAP allows the use of a linear, quadratic, or linear-quadratic dose-response function, although the code is structured so that the user may include an exponential factor or substitute any preferred dose-response function

On the Organizational Dynamics of the Genetic Code

KAUST Repository

Zhang, Zhang

2011-06-07

The organization of the canonical genetic code needs to be thoroughly illuminated. Here we reorder the four nucleotides—adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine—according to their emergence in evolution, and apply the organizational rules to devising an algebraic representation for the canonical genetic code. Under a framework of the devised code, we quantify codon and amino acid usages from a large collection of 917 prokaryotic genome sequences, and associate the usages with its intrinsic structure and classification schemes as well as amino acid physicochemical properties. Our results show that the algebraic representation of the code is structurally equivalent to a content-centric organization of the code and that codon and amino acid usages under different classification schemes were correlated closely with GC content, implying a set of rules governing composition dynamics across a wide variety of prokaryotic genome sequences. These results also indicate that codons and amino acids are not randomly allocated in the code, where the six-fold degenerate codons and their amino acids have important balancing roles for error minimization. Therefore, the content-centric code is of great usefulness in deciphering its hitherto unknown regularities as well as the dynamics of nucleotide, codon, and amino acid compositions.

On the Organizational Dynamics of the Genetic Code

KAUST Repository

Zhang, Zhang; Yu, Jun

2011-01-01

The organization of the canonical genetic code needs to be thoroughly illuminated. Here we reorder the four nucleotides—adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine—according to their emergence in evolution, and apply the organizational rules to devising an algebraic representation for the canonical genetic code. Under a framework of the devised code, we quantify codon and amino acid usages from a large collection of 917 prokaryotic genome sequences, and associate the usages with its intrinsic structure and classification schemes as well as amino acid physicochemical properties. Our results show that the algebraic representation of the code is structurally equivalent to a content-centric organization of the code and that codon and amino acid usages under different classification schemes were correlated closely with GC content, implying a set of rules governing composition dynamics across a wide variety of prokaryotic genome sequences. These results also indicate that codons and amino acids are not randomly allocated in the code, where the six-fold degenerate codons and their amino acids have important balancing roles for error minimization. Therefore, the content-centric code is of great usefulness in deciphering its hitherto unknown regularities as well as the dynamics of nucleotide, codon, and amino acid compositions.

Odor Discrimination in Drosophila: From Neural Population Codes to Behavior

Science.gov (United States)

Parnas, Moshe; Lin, Andrew C.; Huetteroth, Wolf; Miesenböck, Gero

2013-01-01

Summary Taking advantage of the well-characterized olfactory system of Drosophila, we derive a simple quantitative relationship between patterns of odorant receptor activation, the resulting internal representations of odors, and odor discrimination. Second-order excitatory and inhibitory projection neurons (ePNs and iPNs) convey olfactory information to the lateral horn, a brain region implicated in innate odor-driven behaviors. We show that the distance between ePN activity patterns is the main determinant of a fly’s spontaneous discrimination behavior. Manipulations that silence subsets of ePNs have graded behavioral consequences, and effect sizes are predicted by changes in ePN distances. ePN distances predict only innate, not learned, behavior because the latter engages the mushroom body, which enables differentiated responses to even very similar odors. Inhibition from iPNs, which scales with olfactory stimulus strength, enhances innate discrimination of closely related odors, by imposing a high-pass filter on transmitter release from ePN terminals that increases the distance between odor representations. PMID:24012006

Anthropomorphic Coding of Speech and Audio: A Model Inversion Approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

W. Bastiaan Kleijn

2005-06-01

Full Text Available Auditory modeling is a well-established methodology that provides insight into human perception and that facilitates the extraction of signal features that are most relevant to the listener. The aim of this paper is to provide a tutorial on perceptual speech and audio coding using an invertible auditory model. In this approach, the audio signal is converted into an auditory representation using an invertible auditory model. The auditory representation is quantized and coded. Upon decoding, it is then transformed back into the acoustic domain. This transformation converts a complex distortion criterion into a simple one, thus facilitating quantization with low complexity. We briefly review past work on auditory models and describe in more detail the components of our invertible model and its inversion procedure, that is, the method to reconstruct the signal from the output of the auditory model. We summarize attempts to use the auditory representation for low-bit-rate coding. Our approach also allows the exploitation of the inherent redundancy of the human auditory system for the purpose of multiple description (joint source-channel coding.

Attention enhances multi-voxel representation of novel objects in frontal, parietal and visual cortices.

Science.gov (United States)

Woolgar, Alexandra; Williams, Mark A; Rich, Anina N

2015-04-01

Selective attention is fundamental for human activity, but the details of its neural implementation remain elusive. One influential theory, the adaptive coding hypothesis (Duncan, 2001, An adaptive coding model of neural function in prefrontal cortex, Nature Reviews Neuroscience 2:820-829), proposes that single neurons in certain frontal and parietal regions dynamically adjust their responses to selectively encode relevant information. This selective representation may in turn support selective processing in more specialized brain regions such as the visual cortices. Here, we use multi-voxel decoding of functional magnetic resonance images to demonstrate selective representation of attended--and not distractor--objects in frontal, parietal, and visual cortices. In addition, we highlight a critical role for task demands in determining which brain regions exhibit selective coding. Strikingly, representation of attended objects in frontoparietal cortex was highest under conditions of high perceptual demand, when stimuli were hard to perceive and coding in early visual cortex was weak. Coding in early visual cortex varied as a function of attention and perceptual demand, while coding in higher visual areas was sensitive to the allocation of attention but robust to changes in perceptual difficulty. Consistent with high-profile reports, peripherally presented objects could also be decoded from activity at the occipital pole, a region which corresponds to the fovea. Our results emphasize the flexibility of frontoparietal and visual systems. They support the hypothesis that attention enhances the multi-voxel representation of information in the brain, and suggest that the engagement of this attentional mechanism depends critically on current task demands. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Coding of visual object features and feature conjunctions in the human brain.

Science.gov (United States)

Martinovic, Jasna; Gruber, Thomas; Müller, Matthias M

2008-01-01

Object recognition is achieved through neural mechanisms reliant on the activity of distributed coordinated neural assemblies. In the initial steps of this process, an object's features are thought to be coded very rapidly in distinct neural assemblies. These features play different functional roles in the recognition process--while colour facilitates recognition, additional contours and edges delay it. Here, we selectively varied the amount and role of object features in an entry-level categorization paradigm and related them to the electrical activity of the human brain. We found that early synchronizations (approx. 100 ms) increased quantitatively when more image features had to be coded, without reflecting their qualitative contribution to the recognition process. Later activity (approx. 200-400 ms) was modulated by the representational role of object features. These findings demonstrate that although early synchronizations may be sufficient for relatively crude discrimination of objects in visual scenes, they cannot support entry-level categorization. This was subserved by later processes of object model selection, which utilized the representational value of object features such as colour or edges to select the appropriate model and achieve identification.

Optimization of Coding of AR Sources for Transmission Across Channels with Loss

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Arildsen, Thomas

Source coding concerns the representation of information in a source signal using as few bits as possible. In the case of lossy source coding, it is the encoding of a source signal using the fewest possible bits at a given distortion or, at the lowest possible distortion given a specified bit rate....... Channel coding is usually applied in combination with source coding to ensure reliable transmission of the (source coded) information at the maximal rate across a channel given the properties of this channel. In this thesis, we consider the coding of auto-regressive (AR) sources which are sources that can...... compared to the case where the encoder is unaware of channel loss. We finally provide an extensive overview of cross-layer communication issues which are important to consider due to the fact that the proposed algorithm interacts with the source coding and exploits channel-related information typically...

Bounded-Angle Iterative Decoding of LDPC Codes

Science.gov (United States)

Dolinar, Samuel; Andrews, Kenneth; Pollara, Fabrizio; Divsalar, Dariush

2009-01-01

Bounded-angle iterative decoding is a modified version of conventional iterative decoding, conceived as a means of reducing undetected-error rates for short low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes. For a given code, bounded-angle iterative decoding can be implemented by means of a simple modification of the decoder algorithm, without redesigning the code. Bounded-angle iterative decoding is based on a representation of received words and code words as vectors in an n-dimensional Euclidean space (where n is an integer).

Collection of regulatory texts relative to radiation protection. Part 1: laws and decrees (Extracts of the Public Health Code and of the Labour Code dealing with the protection of population, patients and workers against the hazards of ionizing radiations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rivas, Robert; Feries, Jean; Marzorati, Frank; Chevalier, Celine; Lachaume, Jean-Luc

2013-01-01

This first part contains legal and regulatory texts extracted from the Public Health Code and related to health general protection and to health products (medical devices), from the Social Security Code, and from the Labour Code related to individual work relationships, to health and safety at work, to work places, to work equipment and means of protection, to the prevention of some exposure risks and of risks related to some activities. This document is an update of the previous version from January 25, 2011

Representation of numerical magnitude in math-anxious individuals.

Science.gov (United States)

Colomé, Àngels

2018-01-01

Larger distance effects in high math-anxious individuals (HMA) performing comparison tasks have previously been interpreted as indicating less precise magnitude representation in this population. A recent study by Dietrich, Huber, Moeller, and Klein limited the effects of math anxiety to symbolic comparison, in which they found larger distance effects for HMA, despite equivalent size effects. However, the question of whether distance effects in symbolic comparison reflect the properties of the magnitude representation or decisional processes is currently under debate. This study was designed to further explore the relation between math anxiety and magnitude representation through three different tasks. HMA and low math-anxious individuals (LMA) performed a non-symbolic comparison, in which no group differences were found. Furthermore, we did not replicate previous findings in an Arabic digit comparison, in which HMA individuals showed equivalent distance effects to their LMA peers. Lastly, there were no group differences in a counting Stroop task. Altogether, an explanation of math anxiety differences in terms of less precise magnitude representation is not supported.

Geographical representation of the European populations with a view to the assessment of collective doses

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Garnier, A.; Sauve, A.; Madelmont, C.

1980-01-01

Demographical data are very important in assessing health consequences of the siting of nuclear plants. In addition to a detailed description of the distribution of population living in the neighbourhood of every site, a less definite representation of the population as a whole is needed to assess the consequences of the long-range transport of pollutants within or outside the national boundaries, in order to determine the collective doses according to the concepts of the ICRP recommendations. For this purpose, the census data of the nine countries of the European Community have been collected. They are presented in two forms: either by communes or following a more or less close-meshed grid. The points have been defined by their geographical coordinates. After merging the informations, the demographic data were classified according to the geographical coordinates. One of them is a distribution programme of the population in the meshes of an European grid, some examples of which are shown. (H.K.)

A generalized Collins formula derived by virtue of the displacement-squeezing related squeezed coherent state representation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chuan-Mei, Xie; Shao-Long, Wan; Hong-Yi, Fan

2010-01-01

Based on the displacement-squeezing related squeezed coherent state representation |z) g and using the technique of integration within an ordered product of operators, this paper finds a generalized Fresnel operator, whose matrix element in the coordinate representation leads to a generalized Collins formula (Huygens–Fresnel integration transformation describing optical diffraction). The generalized Fresnel operator is derived by a quantum mechanical mapping from z to sz - rz * in the |z) g representation, while |z) g in phase space is graphically denoted by an ellipse. (classical areas of phenomenology)

User manual for version 4.3 of the Tripoli-4 Monte-Carlo method particle transport computer code; Notice d'utilisation du code Tripoli-4, version 4.3: code de transport de particules par la methode de Monte Carlo

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Both, J.P.; Mazzolo, A.; Peneliau, Y.; Petit, O.; Roesslinger, B

2003-07-01

This manual relates to Version 4.3 TRIPOLI-4 code. TRIPOLI-4 is a computer code simulating the transport of neutrons, photons, electrons and positrons. It can be used for radiation shielding calculations (long-distance propagation with flux attenuation in non-multiplying media) and neutronic calculations (fissile medium, criticality or sub-criticality basis). This makes it possible to calculate k{sub eff} (for criticality), flux, currents, reaction rates and multi-group cross-sections. TRIPOLI-4 is a three-dimensional code that uses the Monte-Carlo method. It allows for point-wise description in terms of energy of cross-sections and multi-group homogenized cross-sections and features two modes of geometrical representation: surface and combinatorial. The code uses cross-section libraries in ENDF/B format (such as JEF2-2, ENDF/B-VI and JENDL) for point-wise description cross-sections in APOTRIM format (from the APOLLO2 code) or a format specific to TRIPOLI-4 for multi-group description. (authors)

Review of Differences of Steel related Properties between Proposals of European Structural Codes

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hertz, Kristian Dahl

Differences of Steel related Properties between fire chapters of the Proposals of European Structural Codes are indicated for the same physical properties, the right properties are found and it is proposed to use these properties in all codes.......Differences of Steel related Properties between fire chapters of the Proposals of European Structural Codes are indicated for the same physical properties, the right properties are found and it is proposed to use these properties in all codes....

Constructing LDPC Codes from Loop-Free Encoding Modules

Science.gov (United States)

Divsalar, Dariush; Dolinar, Samuel; Jones, Christopher; Thorpe, Jeremy; Andrews, Kenneth

2009-01-01

A method of constructing certain low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes by use of relatively simple loop-free coding modules has been developed. The subclasses of LDPC codes to which the method applies includes accumulate-repeat-accumulate (ARA) codes, accumulate-repeat-check-accumulate codes, and the codes described in Accumulate-Repeat-Accumulate-Accumulate Codes (NPO-41305), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 31, No. 9 (September 2007), page 90. All of the affected codes can be characterized as serial/parallel (hybrid) concatenations of such relatively simple modules as accumulators, repetition codes, differentiators, and punctured single-parity check codes. These are error-correcting codes suitable for use in a variety of wireless data-communication systems that include noisy channels. These codes can also be characterized as hybrid turbolike codes that have projected graph or protograph representations (for example see figure); these characteristics make it possible to design high-speed iterative decoders that utilize belief-propagation algorithms. The present method comprises two related submethods for constructing LDPC codes from simple loop-free modules with circulant permutations. The first submethod is an iterative encoding method based on the erasure-decoding algorithm. The computations required by this method are well organized because they involve a parity-check matrix having a block-circulant structure. The second submethod involves the use of block-circulant generator matrices. The encoders of this method are very similar to those of recursive convolutional codes. Some encoders according to this second submethod have been implemented in a small field-programmable gate array that operates at a speed of 100 megasymbols per second. By use of density evolution (a computational- simulation technique for analyzing performances of LDPC codes), it has been shown through some examples that as the block size goes to infinity, low iterative decoding thresholds close to

Functional interplay of top-down attention with affective codes during visual short-term memory maintenance.

Science.gov (United States)

Kuo, Bo-Cheng; Lin, Szu-Hung; Yeh, Yei-Yu

2018-06-01

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) allows individuals to briefly maintain information over time for guiding behaviours. Because the contents of VSTM can be neutral or emotional, top-down influence in VSTM may vary with the affective codes of maintained representations. Here we investigated the neural mechanisms underlying the functional interplay of top-down attention with affective codes in VSTM using functional magnetic resonance imaging. Participants were instructed to remember both threatening and neutral objects in a cued VSTM task. Retrospective cues (retro-cues) were presented to direct attention to the hemifield of a threatening object (i.e., cue-to-threat) or a neutral object (i.e., cue-to-neutral) during VSTM maintenance. We showed stronger activity in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex and amygdala for attending threatening relative to neutral representations. Using multivoxel pattern analysis, we found better classification performance for cue-to-threat versus cue-to-neutral objects in early visual areas and in the amygdala. Importantly, retro-cues modulated the strength of functional connectivity between the frontoparietal and early visual areas. Activity in the frontoparietal areas became strongly correlated with the activity in V3a-V4 coding the threatening representations instructed to be relevant for the task. Together, these findings provide the first demonstration of top-down modulation of activation patterns in early visual areas and functional connectivity between the frontoparietal network and early visual areas for regulating threatening representations during VSTM maintenance. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Conversion of palatal rugae pattern to scanable Quick Response code in an Arabian population

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sadatullah Syed

2016-09-01

Conclusion: The alphanumeric and QR code of the rugae pattern are unique for each individual and can be used for digital record keeping and person identification. A high degree of sexual dimorphism in PR exists in the studied Arab population studied.

Boolean network representation of contagion dynamics during a financial crisis

Science.gov (United States)

Caetano, Marco Antonio Leonel; Yoneyama, Takashi

2015-01-01

This work presents a network model for representation of the evolution of certain patterns of economic behavior. More specifically, after representing the agents as points in a space in which each dimension associated to a relevant economic variable, their relative "motions" that can be either stationary or discordant, are coded into a boolean network. Patterns with stationary averages indicate the maintenance of status quo, whereas discordant patterns represent aggregation of new agent into the cluster or departure from the former policies. The changing patterns can be embedded into a network representation, particularly using the concept of autocatalytic boolean networks. As a case study, the economic tendencies of the BRIC countries + Argentina were studied. Although Argentina is not included in the cluster formed by BRIC countries, it tends to follow the BRIC members because of strong commercial ties.

Sparsity in Linear Predictive Coding of Speech

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Giacobello, Daniele

of the effectiveness of their application in audio processing. The second part of the thesis deals with introducing sparsity directly in the linear prediction analysis-by-synthesis (LPAS) speech coding paradigm. We first propose a novel near-optimal method to look for a sparse approximate excitation using a compressed...... one with direct applications to coding but also consistent with the speech production model of voiced speech, where the excitation of the all-pole filter can be modeled as an impulse train, i.e., a sparse sequence. Introducing sparsity in the LP framework will also bring to de- velop the concept...... sensing formulation. Furthermore, we define a novel re-estimation procedure to adapt the predictor coefficients to the given sparse excitation, balancing the two representations in the context of speech coding. Finally, the advantages of the compact parametric representation of a segment of speech, given...

Phase-amplitude coupling supports phase coding in human ECoG

Science.gov (United States)

Watrous, Andrew J; Deuker, Lorena; Fell, Juergen; Axmacher, Nikolai

2015-01-01

Prior studies have shown that high-frequency activity (HFA) is modulated by the phase of low-frequency activity. This phenomenon of phase-amplitude coupling (PAC) is often interpreted as reflecting phase coding of neural representations, although evidence for this link is still lacking in humans. Here, we show that PAC indeed supports phase-dependent stimulus representations for categories. Six patients with medication-resistant epilepsy viewed images of faces, tools, houses, and scenes during simultaneous acquisition of intracranial recordings. Analyzing 167 electrodes, we observed PAC at 43% of electrodes. Further inspection of PAC revealed that category specific HFA modulations occurred at different phases and frequencies of the underlying low-frequency rhythm, permitting decoding of categorical information using the phase at which HFA events occurred. These results provide evidence for categorical phase-coded neural representations and are the first to show that PAC coincides with phase-dependent coding in the human brain. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.07886.001 PMID:26308582

Verbal Short-Term Memory Deficits in Chinese Children with Dyslexia may not be a Problem with the Activation of Phonological Representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhao, Jing; Yang, Yang; Song, Yao-Wu; Bi, Hong-Yan

2015-11-01

This study explored the underlying mechanism of the verbal short-term memory deficit in Chinese children with developmental dyslexia. Twenty-four children with dyslexia and 28 age-matched normal readers participated in the study. They were required to memorize a visually presented series of six Chinese characters and identify them from a list also including code-specific distracters and non-code-specific distracters. Error rates were recorded and were higher for code-specific distracters in all three conditions, revealing phonological, visual, and semantic similarity effects respectively. Group comparisons showed a stronger phonological similarity effect in dyslexic group, suggesting intact activation of phonological representations of target characters. Children with dyslexia also exhibited a greater semantic similarity effect, revealing stronger activation of semantic representations, while visual similarity effects were equivalent to controls. These results suggest that the verbal short-term memory deficit in Chinese dyslexics might not stem from insufficient activation of phonological information. Based the semantic activation of target characters in dyslexics is greater than in controls, it is possible that the memory deficit of dyslexia is related with deficient inhibition of target semantic representations in short-term memory. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

View-Independent Working Memory Representations of Artificial Shapes in Prefrontal and Posterior Regions of the Human Brain.

Science.gov (United States)

Christophel, Thomas B; Allefeld, Carsten; Endisch, Christian; Haynes, John-Dylan

2017-05-13

Traditional views of visual working memory postulate that memorized contents are stored in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex using an adaptive and flexible code. In contrast, recent studies proposed that contents are maintained by posterior brain areas using codes akin to perceptual representations. An important question is whether this reflects a difference in the level of abstraction between posterior and prefrontal representations. Here, we investigated whether neural representations of visual working memory contents are view-independent, as indicated by rotation-invariance. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivariate pattern analyses, we show that when subjects memorize complex shapes, both posterior and frontal brain regions maintain the memorized contents using a rotation-invariant code. Importantly, we found the representations in frontal cortex to be localized to the frontal eye fields rather than dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. Thus, our results give evidence for the view-independent storage of complex shapes in distributed representations across posterior and frontal brain regions. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Feedback equivalence of convolutional codes over finite rings

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

DeCastro-García Noemí

2017-12-01

Full Text Available The approach to convolutional codes from the linear systems point of view provides us with effective tools in order to construct convolutional codes with adequate properties that let us use them in many applications. In this work, we have generalized feedback equivalence between families of convolutional codes and linear systems over certain rings, and we show that every locally Brunovsky linear system may be considered as a representation of a code under feedback convolutional equivalence.

Noniterative MAP reconstruction using sparse matrix representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Cao, Guangzhi; Bouman, Charles A; Webb, Kevin J

2009-09-01

We present a method for noniterative maximum a posteriori (MAP) tomographic reconstruction which is based on the use of sparse matrix representations. Our approach is to precompute and store the inverse matrix required for MAP reconstruction. This approach has generally not been used in the past because the inverse matrix is typically large and fully populated (i.e., not sparse). In order to overcome this problem, we introduce two new ideas. The first idea is a novel theory for the lossy source coding of matrix transformations which we refer to as matrix source coding. This theory is based on a distortion metric that reflects the distortions produced in the final matrix-vector product, rather than the distortions in the coded matrix itself. The resulting algorithms are shown to require orthonormal transformations of both the measurement data and the matrix rows and columns before quantization and coding. The second idea is a method for efficiently storing and computing the required orthonormal transformations, which we call a sparse-matrix transform (SMT). The SMT is a generalization of the classical FFT in that it uses butterflies to compute an orthonormal transform; but unlike an FFT, the SMT uses the butterflies in an irregular pattern, and is numerically designed to best approximate the desired transforms. We demonstrate the potential of the noniterative MAP reconstruction with examples from optical tomography. The method requires offline computation to encode the inverse transform. However, once these offline computations are completed, the noniterative MAP algorithm is shown to reduce both storage and computation by well over two orders of magnitude, as compared to a linear iterative reconstruction methods.

A graph model for opportunistic network coding

KAUST Repository

Sorour, Sameh

2015-08-12

© 2015 IEEE. Recent advancements in graph-based analysis and solutions of instantly decodable network coding (IDNC) trigger the interest to extend them to more complicated opportunistic network coding (ONC) scenarios, with limited increase in complexity. In this paper, we design a simple IDNC-like graph model for a specific subclass of ONC, by introducing a more generalized definition of its vertices and the notion of vertex aggregation in order to represent the storage of non-instantly-decodable packets in ONC. Based on this representation, we determine the set of pairwise vertex adjacency conditions that can populate this graph with edges so as to guarantee decodability or aggregation for the vertices of each clique in this graph. We then develop the algorithmic procedures that can be applied on the designed graph model to optimize any performance metric for this ONC subclass. A case study on reducing the completion time shows that the proposed framework improves on the performance of IDNC and gets very close to the optimal performance.

A Knowledge-Based Representation Scheme for Environmental Science Models

Science.gov (United States)

Keller, Richard M.; Dungan, Jennifer L.; Lum, Henry, Jr. (Technical Monitor)

1994-01-01

One of the primary methods available for studying environmental phenomena is the construction and analysis of computational models. We have been studying how artificial intelligence techniques can be applied to assist in the development and use of environmental science models within the context of NASA-sponsored activities. We have identified several high-utility areas as potential targets for research and development: model development; data visualization, analysis, and interpretation; model publishing and reuse, training and education; and framing, posing, and answering questions. Central to progress on any of the above areas is a representation for environmental models that contains a great deal more information than is present in a traditional software implementation. In particular, a traditional software implementation is devoid of any semantic information that connects the code with the environmental context that forms the background for the modeling activity. Before we can build AI systems to assist in model development and usage, we must develop a representation for environmental models that adequately describes a model's semantics and explicitly represents the relationship between the code and the modeling task at hand. We have developed one such representation in conjunction with our work on the SIGMA (Scientists' Intelligent Graphical Modeling Assistant) environment. The key feature of the representation is that it provides a semantic grounding for the symbols in a set of modeling equations by linking those symbols to an explicit representation of the underlying environmental scenario.

Research on pre-processing of QR Code

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Haixing; Xia, Haojie; Dong, Ning

2013-10-01

QR code encodes many kinds of information because of its advantages: large storage capacity, high reliability, full arrange of utter-high-speed reading, small printing size and high-efficient representation of Chinese characters, etc. In order to obtain the clearer binarization image from complex background, and improve the recognition rate of QR code, this paper researches on pre-processing methods of QR code (Quick Response Code), and shows algorithms and results of image pre-processing for QR code recognition. Improve the conventional method by changing the Souvola's adaptive text recognition method. Additionally, introduce the QR code Extraction which adapts to different image size, flexible image correction approach, and improve the efficiency and accuracy of QR code image processing.

Spatial representations are specific to different domains of knowledge.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rowena Beecham

Full Text Available There is evidence that many abstract concepts are represented cognitively in a spatial format. However, it is unknown whether similar spatial processes are employed in different knowledge domains, or whether individuals exhibit similar spatial profiles within and across domains. This research investigated similarities in spatial representation in two knowledge domains--mathematics and music. Sixty-one adults completed analogous number magnitude and pitch discrimination tasks: the Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes and Spatial-Musical Association of Response Codes tasks. Subgroups of individuals with different response patterns were identified through cluster analyses. For both the mathematical and musical tasks, approximately half of the participants showed the expected spatial judgment effect when explicitly cued to focus on the spatial properties of the stimuli. Despite this, performances on the two tasks were largely independent. Consistent with previous research, the study provides evidence for the spatial representation of number and pitch in the majority of individuals. However, there was little evidence to support the claim that the same spatial representation processes underpin mathematical and musical judgments.

Sparse representation of sounds in the unanesthetized auditory cortex.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomás Hromádka

2008-01-01

Full Text Available How do neuronal populations in the auditory cortex represent acoustic stimuli? Although sound-evoked neural responses in the anesthetized auditory cortex are mainly transient, recent experiments in the unanesthetized preparation have emphasized subpopulations with other response properties. To quantify the relative contributions of these different subpopulations in the awake preparation, we have estimated the representation of sounds across the neuronal population using a representative ensemble of stimuli. We used cell-attached recording with a glass electrode, a method for which single-unit isolation does not depend on neuronal activity, to quantify the fraction of neurons engaged by acoustic stimuli (tones, frequency modulated sweeps, white-noise bursts, and natural stimuli in the primary auditory cortex of awake head-fixed rats. We find that the population response is sparse, with stimuli typically eliciting high firing rates (>20 spikes/second in less than 5% of neurons at any instant. Some neurons had very low spontaneous firing rates (<0.01 spikes/second. At the other extreme, some neurons had driven rates in excess of 50 spikes/second. Interestingly, the overall population response was well described by a lognormal distribution, rather than the exponential distribution that is often reported. Our results represent, to our knowledge, the first quantitative evidence for sparse representations of sounds in the unanesthetized auditory cortex. Our results are compatible with a model in which most neurons are silent much of the time, and in which representations are composed of small dynamic subsets of highly active neurons.

Representing high-dimensional data to intelligent prostheses and other wearable assistive robots: A first comparison of tile coding and selective Kanerva coding.

Science.gov (United States)

Travnik, Jaden B; Pilarski, Patrick M

2017-07-01

Prosthetic devices have advanced in their capabilities and in the number and type of sensors included in their design. As the space of sensorimotor data available to a conventional or machine learning prosthetic control system increases in dimensionality and complexity, it becomes increasingly important that this data be represented in a useful and computationally efficient way. Well structured sensory data allows prosthetic control systems to make informed, appropriate control decisions. In this study, we explore the impact that increased sensorimotor information has on current machine learning prosthetic control approaches. Specifically, we examine the effect that high-dimensional sensory data has on the computation time and prediction performance of a true-online temporal-difference learning prediction method as embedded within a resource-limited upper-limb prosthesis control system. We present results comparing tile coding, the dominant linear representation for real-time prosthetic machine learning, with a newly proposed modification to Kanerva coding that we call selective Kanerva coding. In addition to showing promising results for selective Kanerva coding, our results confirm potential limitations to tile coding as the number of sensory input dimensions increases. To our knowledge, this study is the first to explicitly examine representations for realtime machine learning prosthetic devices in general terms. This work therefore provides an important step towards forming an efficient prosthesis-eye view of the world, wherein prompt and accurate representations of high-dimensional data may be provided to machine learning control systems within artificial limbs and other assistive rehabilitation technologies.

Population Density and AIDS-Related Stigma in Large-Urban, Small-Urban, and Rural Communities of the Southeastern USA.

Science.gov (United States)

Kalichman, Seth; Katner, Harold; Banas, Ellen; Kalichman, Moira

2017-07-01

AIDS stigmas delay HIV diagnosis, interfere with health care, and contribute to mental health problems among people living with HIV. While there are few studies of the geographical distribution of AIDS stigma, research suggests that AIDS stigmas are differentially experienced in rural and urban areas. We conducted computerized interviews with 696 men and women living with HIV in 113 different zip code areas that were classified as large-urban, small-urban, and rural areas in a southeast US state with high-HIV prevalence. Analyses conducted at the individual level (N = 696) accounting for clustering at the zip code level showed that internalized AIDS-related stigma (e.g., the sense of being inferior to others because of HIV) was experienced with greater magnitude in less densely populated communities. Multilevel models indicated that after adjusting for potential confounding factors, rural communities reported greater internalized AIDS-related stigma compared to large-urban areas and that small-urban areas indicated greater experiences of enacted stigma (e.g., discrimination) than large-urban areas. The associations between anticipated AIDS-related stigma (e.g., expecting discrimination) and population density at the community-level were not significant. Results suggest that people living in rural and small-urban settings experience greater AIDS-related internalized and enacted stigma than their counterparts living in large-urban centers. Research is needed to determine whether low-density population areas contribute to or are sought out by people who experienced greater AIDS-related stigma. Regardless of causal directions, interventions are needed to address AIDS-related stigma, especially among people in sparsely populated areas with limited resources.

Terrorism-related fear and avoidance behavior in a multiethnic urban population.

Science.gov (United States)

Eisenman, David P; Glik, Deborah; Ong, Michael; Zhou, Qiong; Tseng, Chi-Hong; Long, Anna; Fielding, Jonathan; Asch, Steven

2009-01-01

We sought to determine whether groups traditionally most vulnerable to disasters would be more likely than would be others to perceive population-level risk as high (as measured by the estimated color-coded alert level) would worry more about terrorism, and would avoid activities because of terrorism concerns. We conducted a random digit dial survey of the Los Angeles County population October 2004 through January 2005 in 6 languages. We asked respondents what color alert level the country was under, how often they worry about terrorist attacks, and how often they avoid activities because of terrorism. Multivariate regression modeled correlates of worry and avoidance, including mental illness, disability, demographic factors, and estimated color-coded alert level. Persons who are mentally ill, those who are disabled, African Americans, Latinos, Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, and non-US citizens were more likely to perceive population-level risk as high, as measured by the estimated color-coded alert level. These groups also reported more worry and avoidance behaviors because of concerns about terrorism. Vulnerable populations experience a disproportionate burden of the psychosocial impact of terrorism threats and our national response. Further studies should investigate the specific behaviors affected and further elucidate disparities in the disaster burden associated with terrorism and terrorism policies.

Binary Biometric Representation through Pairwise Adaptive Phase Quantization

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Chen, C.; Veldhuis, Raymond N.J.

Extracting binary strings from real-valued biometric templates is a fundamental step in template compression and protection systems, such as fuzzy commitment, fuzzy extractor, secure sketch, and helper data systems. Quantization and coding is the straightforward way to extract binary representations

Spatiotemporal representation of cardiac vectorcardiogram (VCG signals

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yang Hui

2012-03-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Vectorcardiogram (VCG signals monitor both spatial and temporal cardiac electrical activities along three orthogonal planes of the body. However, the absence of spatiotemporal resolution in conventional VCG representations is a major impediment for medical interpretation and clinical usage of VCG. This is especially so because time-domain features of 12-lead ECG, instead of both spatial and temporal characteristics of VCG, are widely used for the automatic assessment of cardiac pathological patterns. Materials and methods We present a novel representation approach that captures critical spatiotemporal heart dynamics by displaying the real time motion of VCG cardiac vectors in a 3D space. Such a dynamic display can also be realized with only one lead ECG signal (e.g., ambulatory ECG through an alternative lag-reconstructed ECG representation from nonlinear dynamics principles. Furthermore, the trajectories are color coded with additional dynamical properties of space-time VCG signals, e.g., the curvature, speed, octant and phase angles to enhance the information visibility. Results In this investigation, spatiotemporal VCG signal representation is used to characterize various spatiotemporal pathological patterns for healthy control (HC, myocardial infarction (MI, atrial fibrillation (AF and bundle branch block (BBB. The proposed color coding scheme revealed that the spatial locations of the peak of T waves are in the Octant 6 for the majority (i.e., 74 out of 80 of healthy recordings in the PhysioNet PTB database. In contrast, the peak of T waves from 31.79% (117/368 of MI subjects are found to remain in Octant 6 and the rest (68.21% spread over all other octants. The spatiotemporal VCG signal representation is shown to capture the same important heart characteristics as the 12-lead ECG plots and more. Conclusions Spatiotemporal VCG signal representation is shown to facilitate the characterization of space-time cardiac

[Neural representations of facial identity and its associative meaning].

Science.gov (United States)

Eifuku, Satoshi

2012-07-01

Since the discovery of "face cells" in the early 1980s, single-cell recording experiments in non-human primates have made significant contributions toward the elucidation of neural mechanisms underlying face perception and recognition. In this paper, we review the recent progress in face cell studies, including the recent remarkable findings of the face patches that are scattered around the anterior temporal cortical areas of monkeys. In particular, we focus on the neural representations of facial identity within these areas. The identification of faces requires both discrimination of facial identities and generalization across facial views. It has been indicated by some laboratories that the population of face cells found in the anterior ventral inferior temporal cortex of monkeys represent facial identity in a manner which is facial view-invariant. These findings suggest a relatively distributed representation that operates for facial identification. It has also been shown that certain individual neurons in the medial temporal lobe of humans represent view-invariant facial identity. This finding suggests a relatively sparse representation that may be employed for memory formation. Finally, we summarize our recent study, showing that the population of face cells in the anterior ventral inferior temporal cortex of monkeys that represent view-invariant facial identity, can also represent learned paired associations between an abstract picture and a particular facial identity, extending our understanding of the function of the anterior ventral inferior temporal cortex in the recognition of associative meanings of faces.

Transparent ICD and DRG coding using information technology: linking and associating information sources with the eXtensible Markup Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Hoelzer, Simon; Schweiger, Ralf K; Dudeck, Joachim

2003-01-01

With the introduction of ICD-10 as the standard for diagnostics, it becomes necessary to develop an electronic representation of its complete content, inherent semantics, and coding rules. The authors' design relates to the current efforts by the CEN/TC 251 to establish a European standard for hierarchical classification systems in health care. The authors have developed an electronic representation of ICD-10 with the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) that facilitates integration into current information systems and coding software, taking different languages and versions into account. In this context, XML provides a complete processing framework of related technologies and standard tools that helps develop interoperable applications. XML provides semantic markup. It allows domain-specific definition of tags and hierarchical document structure. The idea of linking and thus combining information from different sources is a valuable feature of XML. In addition, XML topic maps are used to describe relationships between different sources, or "semantically associated" parts of these sources. The issue of achieving a standardized medical vocabulary becomes more and more important with the stepwise implementation of diagnostically related groups, for example. The aim of the authors' work is to provide a transparent and open infrastructure that can be used to support clinical coding and to develop further software applications. The authors are assuming that a comprehensive representation of the content, structure, inherent semantics, and layout of medical classification systems can be achieved through a document-oriented approach.

The sign rule and beyond: boundary effects, flexibility, and noise correlations in neural population codes.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yu Hu

2014-02-01

Full Text Available Over repeat presentations of the same stimulus, sensory neurons show variable responses. This "noise" is typically correlated between pairs of cells, and a question with rich history in neuroscience is how these noise correlations impact the population's ability to encode the stimulus. Here, we consider a very general setting for population coding, investigating how information varies as a function of noise correlations, with all other aspects of the problem - neural tuning curves, etc. - held fixed. This work yields unifying insights into the role of noise correlations. These are summarized in the form of theorems, and illustrated with numerical examples involving neurons with diverse tuning curves. Our main contributions are as follows. (1 We generalize previous results to prove a sign rule (SR - if noise correlations between pairs of neurons have opposite signs vs. their signal correlations, then coding performance will improve compared to the independent case. This holds for three different metrics of coding performance, and for arbitrary tuning curves and levels of heterogeneity. This generality is true for our other results as well. (2 As also pointed out in the literature, the SR does not provide a necessary condition for good coding. We show that a diverse set of correlation structures can improve coding. Many of these violate the SR, as do experimentally observed correlations. There is structure to this diversity: we prove that the optimal correlation structures must lie on boundaries of the possible set of noise correlations. (3 We provide a novel set of necessary and sufficient conditions, under which the coding performance (in the presence of noise will be as good as it would be if there were no noise present at all.

DFIG turbine representation for small signal voltage control studies

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Garcia, Jorge Martinez; Kjær, Philip Carne; Teodorescu, Remus

2010-01-01

This paper addresses the representation of a wind power plant, based on wound rotor asynchronous generators, with a centralized voltage controller, by an equivalent transfer function, valid for small signal voltage control studies. This representation allows to investigate the influence...... introduced recently by several grid codes from around the world, making important to analyze this control when applied to wind power plants. The performance of the equivalent transfer function has been evaluated and compared using an equivalent grid with different short circuit ratios and active power...... of the centralized plant control gain and short circuit ratio on the system stability, for instance, by analyzing the zero-pole placement. Larger percentages of wind power penetration translate to more demanding requirements coming from the grid codes, for example voltage support at the point of connection has been...

Roma Minority in Romania and its Media Representation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gabriela Creţu

2014-11-01

Full Text Available The aim of this paper is to put into light main aspects of the relationship between the image of Roma as perceived by the majority of population and its representation in the Romanian press from 1990 until 2006. The representation of Roma is considered a cause and, in the same time, a consequence of the identity problem of this population as an ethnic group, on one side, and of its social status, on the other side. The situation of Roma in the Romanian society, the modalities of Roma portrayal in press and the factors that influence its representation are addressed in the paper.

Structure-aware Local Sparse Coding for Visual Tracking

KAUST Repository

Qi, Yuankai

2018-01-24

Sparse coding has been applied to visual tracking and related vision problems with demonstrated success in recent years. Existing tracking methods based on local sparse coding sample patches from a target candidate and sparsely encode these using a dictionary consisting of patches sampled from target template images. The discriminative strength of existing methods based on local sparse coding is limited as spatial structure constraints among the template patches are not exploited. To address this problem, we propose a structure-aware local sparse coding algorithm which encodes a target candidate using templates with both global and local sparsity constraints. For robust tracking, we show local regions of a candidate region should be encoded only with the corresponding local regions of the target templates that are the most similar from the global view. Thus, a more precise and discriminative sparse representation is obtained to account for appearance changes. To alleviate the issues with tracking drifts, we design an effective template update scheme. Extensive experiments on challenging image sequences demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm against numerous stateof- the-art methods.

HLA-E regulatory and coding region variability and haplotypes in a Brazilian population sample.

Science.gov (United States)

Ramalho, Jaqueline; Veiga-Castelli, Luciana C; Donadi, Eduardo A; Mendes-Junior, Celso T; Castelli, Erick C

2017-11-01

The HLA-E gene is characterized by low but wide expression on different tissues. HLA-E is considered a conserved gene, being one of the least polymorphic class I HLA genes. The HLA-E molecule interacts with Natural Killer cell receptors and T lymphocytes receptors, and might activate or inhibit immune responses depending on the peptide associated with HLA-E and with which receptors HLA-E interacts to. Variable sites within the HLA-E regulatory and coding segments may influence the gene function by modifying its expression pattern or encoded molecule, thus, influencing its interaction with receptors and the peptide. Here we propose an approach to evaluate the gene structure, haplotype pattern and the complete HLA-E variability, including regulatory (promoter and 3'UTR) and coding segments (with introns), by using massively parallel sequencing. We investigated the variability of 420 samples from a very admixed population such as Brazilians by using this approach. Considering a segment of about 7kb, 63 variable sites were detected, arranged into 75 extended haplotypes. We detected 37 different promoter sequences (but few frequent ones), 27 different coding sequences (15 representing new HLA-E alleles) and 12 haplotypes at the 3'UTR segment, two of them presenting a summed frequency of 90%. Despite the number of coding alleles, they encode mainly two different full-length molecules, known as E*01:01 and E*01:03, which corresponds to about 90% of all. In addition, differently from what has been previously observed for other non classical HLA genes, the relationship among the HLA-E promoter, coding and 3'UTR haplotypes is not straightforward because the same promoter and 3'UTR haplotypes were many times associated with different HLA-E coding haplotypes. This data reinforces the presence of only two main full-length HLA-E molecules encoded by the many HLA-E alleles detected in our population sample. In addition, this data does indicate that the distal HLA-E promoter is by

Computation of the Genetic Code

Science.gov (United States)

Kozlov, Nicolay N.; Kozlova, Olga N.

2018-03-01

One of the problems in the development of mathematical theory of the genetic code (summary is presented in [1], the detailed -to [2]) is the problem of the calculation of the genetic code. Similar problems in the world is unknown and could be delivered only in the 21st century. One approach to solving this problem is devoted to this work. For the first time provides a detailed description of the method of calculation of the genetic code, the idea of which was first published earlier [3]), and the choice of one of the most important sets for the calculation was based on an article [4]. Such a set of amino acid corresponds to a complete set of representations of the plurality of overlapping triple gene belonging to the same DNA strand. A separate issue was the initial point, triggering an iterative search process all codes submitted by the initial data. Mathematical analysis has shown that the said set contains some ambiguities, which have been founded because of our proposed compressed representation of the set. As a result, the developed method of calculation was limited to the two main stages of research, where the first stage only the of the area were used in the calculations. The proposed approach will significantly reduce the amount of computations at each step in this complex discrete structure.

Social Representations of Latin American History and (PostColonial Relations in Brazil, Chile and Mexico

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Julia Alves Brasil

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Social representations of history play an important role in defining the identity of national and supranational groups such as Latin America, and also influencing present-day intergroup relations. In this paper, we discuss a study that aimed to analyse and compare social representations of Latin American history among Brazilian, Chilean, and Mexican participants. We conducted a survey with 213 university students, aged 18 to 35 years old, from these three countries, through an online questionnaire with open-ended questions about important events and people in the region's history. Despite the reference to different historical events and the existence of national specificities, several common topics were noteworthy across the three samples. There was a centrality of events involving political issues, conflicts and revolutions, as well as a recency effect and a sociocentric bias, replicating previous research about social representations of world history in different countries. There was also a strong prominence of colonization and independence issues in all samples. Through an emphasis on a common narrative of struggle and overcoming difficulties, the participants’ social representations of Latin American history may favour mobilization and resistance, challenging the stability and legitimacy of the existing social order. Furthermore, the findings are discussed in terms of their potential connections with present-day intergroup relations within Latin America, and between Latin America and other parts of the world.

Codes of practice and related issues in biomedical waste management

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Moy, D.; Watt, C. [Griffith Univ. (Australia)

1996-12-31

This paper outlines the development of a National Code of Practice for biomedical waste management in Australia. The 10 key areas addressed by the code are industry mission statement; uniform terms and definitions; community relations - public perceptions and right to know; generation, source separation, and handling; storage requirements; transportation; treatment and disposal; disposal of solid and liquid residues and air emissions; occupational health and safety; staff awareness and education. A comparison with other industry codes in Australia is made. A list of outstanding issues is also provided; these include the development of standard containers, treatment effectiveness, and reusable sharps containers.

A reduced complexity highly power/bandwidth efficient coded FQPSK system with iterative decoding

Science.gov (United States)

Simon, M. K.; Divsalar, D.

2001-01-01

Based on a representation of FQPSK as a trellis-coded modulation, this paper investigates the potential improvement in power efficiency obtained from the application of simple outer codes to form a concatenated coding arrangement with iterative decoding.

Thin Versus Thick Description: Analyzing Representations of People and Their Life Worlds in the Literature of Communication Sciences and Disorders.

Science.gov (United States)

Hengst, Julie A; Devanga, Suma; Mosier, Hillary

2015-11-01

Evidence-based practice relies on clinicians to translate research evidence for individual clients. This study, the initial phase of a broader research project, examines the textual resources of such translations by analyzing how people with acquired cognitive-communication disorders (ACCD) and their life worlds have been represented in Communication Sciences and Disorders (CSD) research articles. Using textual analysis, we completed a categorical analysis of 6,059 articles published between 1936 and 2012, coding for genre, population, and any evidence of thick representations of people and their life worlds, and a discourse analysis of representations used in 56 ACCD research articles, identifying thin and thick representations in 4 domains (derived from the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health) and across article sections. The categorical analysis identified a higher percentage of ACCD articles with some evidence of thick representation (30%) compared with all CSD articles (12%) sampled. However, discourse analysis of ACCD research articles found that thick representations were quite limited; 34/56 articles had thin representational profiles, 19/56 had mixed profiles, and 3/56 had thick profiles. These findings document the dominance of thin representations in the CSD literature, which we suggest makes translational work more difficult. How clinicians translate such evidence will be addressed in the next research phase, an interview study of speech-language pathologists.

Generalized rank weights of reducible codes, optimal cases and related properties

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Martinez Peñas, Umberto

2018-01-01

in network coding. In this paper, we study their security behavior against information leakage on networks when applied as coset coding schemes, giving the following main results: 1) we give lower and upper bounds on their generalized rank weights (GRWs), which measure worst case information leakage...... to the wire tapper; 2) we find new parameters for which these codes are MRD (meaning that their first GRW is optimal) and use the previous bounds to estimate their higher GRWs; 3) we show that all linear (over the extension field) codes, whose GRWs are all optimal for fixed packet and code sizes but varying...... length are reducible codes up to rank equivalence; and 4) we show that the information leaked to a wire tapper when using reducible codes is often much less than the worst case given by their (optimal in some cases) GRWs. We conclude with some secondary related properties: conditions to be rank...

Stochastic Nonlinear Evolutional Model of the Large-Scaled Neuronal Population and Dynamic Neural Coding Subject to Stimulation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wang Rubin; Yu Wei

2005-01-01

In this paper, we investigate how the population of neuronal oscillators deals with information and the dynamic evolution of neural coding when the external stimulation acts on it. Numerically computing method is used to describe the evolution process of neural coding in three-dimensioned space. The numerical result proves that only the suitable stimulation can change the coupling structure and plasticity of neurons

Mirage, a food chain transfer and dosimetric impact code in relation with atmospheric and liquid dispersion codes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Van Dorpe, F.; Jourdain, F.

2006-01-01

Full text: The numerical code M.I.R.A.G.E. (Module of Radiological impact calculations on the Environment due to accidental or chronic nuclear releases through Aqueous and Gas media) has been developed to simulate the radionuclides transfer in the biosphere and food chains, as well as the dosimetric impact on man, after accidental or chronic releases in the environment by nuclear installations. The originality of M.I.R.A.G.E. is to propose a single tool chained downstream with various atmospheric and liquid dispersion codes. The code M.I.R.A.G.E. is a series of modules which makes it possible to carry out evaluations on the transfers in food chains and human dose impact. Currently, M.I.R.A.G.E. is chained with a Gaussian atmospheric dispersion code H.A.R.M.A.T.T.A.N. (Cea), a 3 D atmospheric dispersion code with Lagrangian model named M.I.N.E.R.V.E.-S.P.R.A.Y. (Aria Technology) and a 3 D groundwater transfer code named M.A.R.T.H.E. (B.R.G.M.). M.I.R.A.G.E. uses concentration or activity result files as initial data input for its calculations. The application initially calculates the concentrations in the various compartments of the environment (soils, plants, animals). The results are given in the shape of concentration and dose maps and also on a particular place called a reference group for dosimetric impact (like a village or a specific population group located around a nuclear installation). The input and output data of M.I.R.A.G.E. can have geographic coordinates and thus readable by a G.I.S. M.I.R.A.G. E.is an opened system with which it is easy to chain other codes of dispersion that those currently used. The calculations uncoupled with dispersion calculations are also possible by manual seizure of the dispersion data (contamination of a tablecloth, particular value in a point, etc.). M.I.R.A.G.E. takes into account soil deposits and resuspension phenomenon, transfers in plants and animals (choice of agricultural parameters, types of plants and animals, etc

TACO: a finite element heat transfer code

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mason, W.E. Jr.

1980-02-01

TACO is a two-dimensional implicit finite element code for heat transfer analysis. It can perform both linear and nonlinear analyses and can be used to solve either transient or steady state problems. Either plane or axisymmetric geometries can be analyzed. TACO has the capability to handle time or temperature dependent material properties and materials may be either isotropic or orthotropic. A variety of time and temperature dependent loadings and boundary conditions are available including temperature, flux, convection, and radiation boundary conditions and internal heat generation. Additionally, TACO has some specialized features such as internal surface conditions (e.g., contact resistance), bulk nodes, enclosure radiation with view factor calculations, and chemical reactive kinetics. A user subprogram feature allows for any type of functional representation of any independent variable. A bandwidth and profile minimization option is also available in the code. Graphical representation of data generated by TACO is provided by a companion post-processor named POSTACO. The theory on which TACO is based is outlined, the capabilities of the code are explained, the input data required to perform an analysis with TACO are described. Some simple examples are provided to illustrate the use of the code

The impact of experiential avoidance on the relations between illness representations, pain catastrophising and pain interference in chronic pain.

Science.gov (United States)

Karademas, Evangelos C; Karekla, Maria; Flouri, Magdalini; Vasiliou, Vasilis S; Kasinopoulos, Orestis; Papacostas, Savvas S

2017-12-01

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of experiential avoidance (EA) on the indirect relationship of chronic pain patients' illness representations to pain interference, through pain catastrophising Design and main outcome measure: The sample consisted of 162 patients diagnosed with an arthritis-related or a musculoskeletal disorder. The effects of EA on the pathway between illness representations, pain catastrophising and pain interference were examined with PROCESS, a computational tool for SPSS Results: After controlling for patient and illness-related variables and pain severity, the 'illness representations-pain catastrophising-pain interference' pathway was interrupted at the higher levels of EA. The reason was that, at the high levels of EA, either the relation of illness representations to pain catastrophising or the relation of pain catastrophising to pain interference was not statistically significant. The findings indicate that EA is not a generalised negative response to highly aversive conditions, at least as far as the factors examined in this study are concerned. EA may rather reflect a coping reaction, the impact of which depends on its specific interactions with the other aspects of the self-regulation mechanism. At least in chronic pain, EA should become the focus of potential intervention only when its interaction with the illness-related self-regulation mechanism results in negative outcomes.

Geospatial Modeling of Asthma Population in Relation to Air Pollution

Science.gov (United States)

Kethireddy, Swatantra R.; Tchounwou, Paul B.; Young, John H.; Luvall, Jeffrey C.; Alhamdan, Mohammad

2013-01-01

Current observations indicate that asthma is growing every year in the United States, specific reasons for this are not well understood. This study stems from an ongoing research effort to investigate the spatio-temporal behavior of asthma and its relatedness to air pollution. The association between environmental variables such as air quality and asthma related health issues over Mississippi State are investigated using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools and applications. Health data concerning asthma obtained from Mississippi State Department of Health (MSDH) for 9-year period of 2003-2011, and data of air pollutant concentrations (PM2.5) collected from USEPA web resources, and are analyzed geospatially to establish the impacts of air quality on human health specifically related to asthma. Disease mapping using geospatial techniques provides valuable insights into the spatial nature, variability, and association of asthma to air pollution. Asthma patient hospitalization data of Mississippi has been analyzed and mapped using quantitative Choropleth techniques in ArcGIS. Patients have been geocoded to their respective zip codes. Potential air pollutant sources of Interstate highways, Industries, and other land use data have been integrated in common geospatial platform to understand their adverse contribution on human health. Existing hospitals and emergency clinics are being injected into analysis to further understand their proximity and easy access to patient locations. At the current level of analysis and understanding, spatial distribution of Asthma is observed in the populations of Zip code regions in gulf coast, along the interstates of south, and in counties of Northeast Mississippi. It is also found that asthma is prevalent in most of the urban population. This GIS based project would be useful to make health risk assessment and provide information support to the administrators and decision makers for establishing satellite clinics in future.

Trellises and Trellis-Based Decoding Algorithms for Linear Block Codes

Science.gov (United States)

Lin, Shu

1998-01-01

A code trellis is a graphical representation of a code, block or convolutional, in which every path represents a codeword (or a code sequence for a convolutional code). This representation makes it possible to implement Maximum Likelihood Decoding (MLD) of a code with reduced decoding complexity. The most well known trellis-based MLD algorithm is the Viterbi algorithm. The trellis representation was first introduced and used for convolutional codes [23]. This representation, together with the Viterbi decoding algorithm, has resulted in a wide range of applications of convolutional codes for error control in digital communications over the last two decades. There are two major reasons for this inactive period of research in this area. First, most coding theorists at that time believed that block codes did not have simple trellis structure like convolutional codes and maximum likelihood decoding of linear block codes using the Viterbi algorithm was practically impossible, except for very short block codes. Second, since almost all of the linear block codes are constructed algebraically or based on finite geometries, it was the belief of many coding theorists that algebraic decoding was the only way to decode these codes. These two reasons seriously hindered the development of efficient soft-decision decoding methods for linear block codes and their applications to error control in digital communications. This led to a general belief that block codes are inferior to convolutional codes and hence, that they were not useful. Chapter 2 gives a brief review of linear block codes. The goal is to provide the essential background material for the development of trellis structure and trellis-based decoding algorithms for linear block codes in the later chapters. Chapters 3 through 6 present the fundamental concepts, finite-state machine model, state space formulation, basic structural properties, state labeling, construction procedures, complexity, minimality, and

Galen-In-Use: using artificial intelligence terminology tools to improve the linguistic coherence of a national coding system for surgical procedures.

Science.gov (United States)

Rodrigues, J M; Trombert-Paviot, B; Baud, R; Wagner, J; Meusnier-Carriot, F

1998-01-01

GALEN has developed a language independent common reference model based on a medically oriented ontology and practical tools and techniques for managing healthcare terminology including natural language processing. GALEN-IN-USE is the current phase which applied the modelling and the tools to the development or the updating of coding systems for surgical procedures in different national coding centers co-operating within the European Federation of Coding Centre (EFCC) to create a language independent knowledge repository for multicultural Europe. We used an integrated set of artificial intelligence terminology tools named CLAssification Manager workbench to process French professional medical language rubrics into intermediate dissections and to the Grail reference ontology model representation. From this language independent concept model representation we generate controlled French natural language. The French national coding centre is then able to retrieve the initial professional rubrics with different categories of concepts, to compare the professional language proposed by expert clinicians to the French generated controlled vocabulary and to finalize the linguistic labels of the coding system in relation with the meanings of the conceptual system structure.

Supervised Convolutional Sparse Coding

KAUST Repository

Affara, Lama Ahmed

2018-04-08

Convolutional Sparse Coding (CSC) is a well-established image representation model especially suited for image restoration tasks. In this work, we extend the applicability of this model by proposing a supervised approach to convolutional sparse coding, which aims at learning discriminative dictionaries instead of purely reconstructive ones. We incorporate a supervised regularization term into the traditional unsupervised CSC objective to encourage the final dictionary elements to be discriminative. Experimental results show that using supervised convolutional learning results in two key advantages. First, we learn more semantically relevant filters in the dictionary and second, we achieve improved image reconstruction on unseen data.

What the success of brain imaging implies about the neural code.

Science.gov (United States)

Guest, Olivia; Love, Bradley C

2017-01-19

The success of fMRI places constraints on the nature of the neural code. The fact that researchers can infer similarities between neural representations, despite fMRI's limitations, implies that certain neural coding schemes are more likely than others. For fMRI to succeed given its low temporal and spatial resolution, the neural code must be smooth at the voxel and functional level such that similar stimuli engender similar internal representations. Through proof and simulation, we determine which coding schemes are plausible given both fMRI's successes and its limitations in measuring neural activity. Deep neural network approaches, which have been forwarded as computational accounts of the ventral stream, are consistent with the success of fMRI, though functional smoothness breaks down in the later network layers. These results have implications for the nature of the neural code and ventral stream, as well as what can be successfully investigated with fMRI.

Bit-coded regular expression parsing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Nielsen, Lasse; Henglein, Fritz

2011-01-01

the DFA-based parsing algorithm due to Dub ´e and Feeley to emit the bits of the bit representation without explicitly materializing the parse tree itself. We furthermore show that Frisch and Cardelli’s greedy regular expression parsing algorithm can be straightforwardly modified to produce bit codings...

Physical activity and influenza-coded outpatient visits, a population-based cohort study.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eric Siu

Full Text Available Although the benefits of physical activity in preventing chronic medical conditions are well established, its impacts on infectious diseases, and seasonal influenza in particular, are less clearly defined. We examined the association between physical activity and influenza-coded outpatient visits, as a proxy for influenza infection.We conducted a cohort study of Ontario respondents to Statistics Canada's population health surveys over 12 influenza seasons. We assessed physical activity levels through survey responses, and influenza-coded physician office and emergency department visits through physician billing claims. We used logistic regression to estimate the risk of influenza-coded outpatient visits during influenza seasons. The cohort comprised 114,364 survey respondents who contributed 357,466 person-influenza seasons of observation. Compared to inactive individuals, moderately active (OR 0.83; 95% CI 0.74-0.94 and active (OR 0.87; 95% CI 0.77-0.98 individuals were less likely to experience an influenza-coded visit. Stratifying by age, the protective effect of physical activity remained significant for individuals <65 years (active OR 0.86; 95% CI 0.75-0.98, moderately active: OR 0.85; 95% CI 0.74-0.97 but not for individuals ≥ 65 years. The main limitations of this study were the use of influenza-coded outpatient visits rather than laboratory-confirmed influenza as the outcome measure, the reliance on self-report for assessing physical activity and various covariates, and the observational study design.Moderate to high amounts of physical activity may be associated with reduced risk of influenza for individuals <65 years. Future research should use laboratory-confirmed influenza outcomes to confirm the association between physical activity and influenza.

Multiple instance learning tracking method with local sparse representation

KAUST Repository

Xie, Chengjun; Tan, Jieqing; Chen, Peng; Zhang, Jie; Helg, Lei

2013-01-01

as training data for the MIL framework. First, local image patches of a target object are represented as sparse codes with an overcomplete dictionary, where the adaptive representation can be helpful in overcoming partial occlusion in object tracking. Then MIL

The Representation of Women in the Advertisement of Persil Washing Powder

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Masoud Kousari

2015-03-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this study is to investigate the representation of women in the advertisement of Persil washing powder. This qualitative study is based on the semiotics method in order to decode the cultural stereotypes in the advertisement of Persil washing powder. The results showed that the representation of women in advertisements is often associated with a set of cultural stereotypical pictures and images. In fact, despite the intended policies to eliminate cultural stereotypical images in advertisements, they are still full of pictures and images showing women are subordinate to men. In the advertisement women are represented as those, who don’t have their own identity and are always in need of paternal- men’s support.   Results showed that female identity is always a reflection of prevalent stereotypes in Iranian society. In terms of these stereotypes, women belong to the home and its environment, and the stereotypes seek to intensify relations with media images. In a real word, the media are in the wake of naturalizing the constructed relations by the cultural codes in the society.

Collection of regulatory texts relative to radiation protection. Part 2: orders and decisions taken in application of the Public Health Code and Labour Code concerning the protection of populations, patients and workers against the risks of ionizing radiations; Recueil de textes reglementaires relatifs a la radioprotection. Partie 2: arretes et decisions pris en application du Code de Sante Publique et du Code du Travail concernant la protection de la population, des patients et des travailleurs contre les dangers des rayonnements ionisants

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

2007-05-15

This collection of texts includes the general measures of population protection, exposure to natural radiations, general system of authorizations and statements, protection of persons exposed to ionizing radiations for medical purpose, situations of radiological emergency and long exposure to ionizing radiations, penal dispositions, application of the Public Health code and application of the Labour code. Chronological contents by date of publication is given. (N.C.)

Promoting a Shared Representation of Workers' Activities to Improve Integrated Prevention of Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yves Roquelaure

2016-06-01

Full Text Available Effective and sustainable prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WR-MSDs remains a challenge for preventers and policy makers. Coordination of stakeholders involved in the prevention of WR-MSDs is a key factor that requires greater reflection on common knowledge and shared representation of workers' activities among stakeholders. Information on workers' strategies and operational leeway should be the core of common representations, because it places workers at the center of the “work situation system” considered by the intervention models. Participatory ergonomics permitting debates among stakeholders about workers' activity and strategies to cope with the work constraints in practice could help them to share representations of the “work situation system” and cooperate. Sharing representation therefore represents a useful tool for prevention, and preventers should provide sufficient space and time for dialogue and discussion of workers' activities among stakeholders during the conception, implementation, and management of integrated prevention programs.

Learning modulation of odor representations: new findings from Arc-indexed networks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Qi eYuan

2014-12-01

Full Text Available We first review our understanding of odor representations in rodent olfactory bulb and anterior piriform cortex. We then consider learning-induced representation changes. Finally we describe the perspective on network representations gained from examining Arc-indexed odor networks of awake rats. Arc-indexed networks are sparse and distributed, consistent with current views. However Arc provides representations of repeated odors. Arc-indexed repeated odor representations are quite variable. Sparse representations are assumed to be compact and reliable memory codes. Arc suggests this is not necessarily the case. The variability seen is consistent with electrophysiology in awake animals and may reflect top down-cortical modulation of context. Arc-indexing shows that distinct odors share larger than predicted neuron pools. These may be low-threshold neuronal subsets.Learning’s effect on Arc-indexed representations is to increase the stable or overlapping component of rewarded odor representations. This component can decrease for similar odors when their discrimination is rewarded. The learning effects seen are supported by electrophysiology, but mechanisms remain to be elucidated.

Choosing the rules: distinct and overlapping frontoparietal representations of task rules for perceptual decisions.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Jiaxiang; Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus; Carlin, Johan D; Rowe, James B

2013-07-17

Behavior is governed by rules that associate stimuli with responses and outcomes. Human and monkey studies have shown that rule-specific information is widely represented in the frontoparietal cortex. However, it is not known how establishing a rule under different contexts affects its neural representation. Here, we use event-related functional MRI (fMRI) and multivoxel pattern classification methods to investigate the human brain's mechanisms of establishing and maintaining rules for multiple perceptual decision tasks. Rules were either chosen by participants or specifically instructed to them, and the fMRI activation patterns representing rule-specific information were compared between these contexts. We show that frontoparietal regions differ in the properties of their rule representations during active maintenance before execution. First, rule-specific information maintained in the dorsolateral and medial frontal cortex depends on the context in which it was established (chosen vs specified). Second, rule representations maintained in the ventrolateral frontal and parietal cortex are independent of the context in which they were established. Furthermore, we found that the rule-specific coding maintained in anticipation of stimuli may change with execution of the rule: representations in context-independent regions remain invariant from maintenance to execution stages, whereas rule representations in context-dependent regions do not generalize to execution stage. The identification of distinct frontoparietal systems with context-independent and context-dependent task rule representations, and the distinction between anticipatory and executive rule representations, provide new insights into the functional architecture of goal-directed behavior.

Chromosome preference of disease genes and vectorization for the prediction of non-coding disease genes.

Science.gov (United States)

Peng, Hui; Lan, Chaowang; Liu, Yuansheng; Liu, Tao; Blumenstein, Michael; Li, Jinyan

2017-10-03

Disease-related protein-coding genes have been widely studied, but disease-related non-coding genes remain largely unknown. This work introduces a new vector to represent diseases, and applies the newly vectorized data for a positive-unlabeled learning algorithm to predict and rank disease-related long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) genes. This novel vector representation for diseases consists of two sub-vectors, one is composed of 45 elements, characterizing the information entropies of the disease genes distribution over 45 chromosome substructures. This idea is supported by our observation that some substructures (e.g., the chromosome 6 p-arm) are highly preferred by disease-related protein coding genes, while some (e.g., the 21 p-arm) are not favored at all. The second sub-vector is 30-dimensional, characterizing the distribution of disease gene enriched KEGG pathways in comparison with our manually created pathway groups. The second sub-vector complements with the first one to differentiate between various diseases. Our prediction method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods on benchmark datasets for prioritizing disease related lncRNA genes. The method also works well when only the sequence information of an lncRNA gene is known, or even when a given disease has no currently recognized long non-coding genes.

Parameterized representation of macroscopic cross section for PWR reactor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fiel, João Cláudio Batista; Carvalho da Silva, Fernando; Senra Martinez, Aquilino; Leal, Luiz C.

2015-01-01

Highlights: • This work describes a parameterized representation of the homogenized macroscopic cross section for PWR reactor. • Parameterization enables a quick determination of problem-dependent cross-sections to be used in few group calculations. • This work allows generating group cross-section data to perform PWR core calculations without computer code calculations. - Abstract: The purpose of this work is to describe, by means of Chebyshev polynomials, a parameterized representation of the homogenized macroscopic cross section for PWR fuel element as a function of soluble boron concentration, moderator temperature, fuel temperature, moderator density and 235 92 U enrichment. The cross-section data analyzed are fission, scattering, total, transport, absorption and capture. The parameterization enables a quick and easy determination of problem-dependent cross-sections to be used in few group calculations. The methodology presented in this paper will allow generation of group cross-section data from stored polynomials to perform PWR core calculations without the need to generate them based on computer code calculations using standard steps. The results obtained by the proposed methodology when compared with results from the SCALE code calculations show very good agreement

A Representation of the Relative Entropy with Respect to a Diffusion Process in Terms of Its Infinitesimal Generator

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Oliver Faugeras

2014-12-01

Full Text Available In this paper we derive an integral (with respect to time representation of the relative entropy (or Kullback–Leibler Divergence R(μ||P, where μ and P are measures on C([0,T];Rd. The underlying measure P is a weak solution to a martingale problem with continuous coefficients. Our representation is in the form of an integral with respect to its infinitesimal generator. This representation is of use in statistical inference (particularly involving medical imaging. Since R(μ||P governs the exponential rate of convergence of the empirical measure (according to Sanov’s theorem, this representation is also of use in the numerical and analytical investigation of finite-size effects in systems of interacting diffusions.

Improving the coding and classification of ambulance data through the application of International Classification of Disease 10th revision.

Science.gov (United States)

Cantwell, Kate; Morgans, Amee; Smith, Karen; Livingston, Michael; Dietze, Paul

2014-02-01

This paper aims to examine whether an adaptation of the International Classification of Disease (ICD) coding system can be applied retrospectively to final paramedic assessment data in an ambulance dataset with a view to developing more fine-grained, clinically relevant case definitions than are available through point-of-call data. Over 1.2 million case records were extracted from the Ambulance Victoria data warehouse. Data fields included dispatch code, cause (CN) and final primary assessment (FPA). Each FPA was converted to an ICD-10-AM code using word matching or best fit. ICD-10-AM codes were then converted into Major Diagnostic Categories (MDC). CN was aligned with the ICD-10-AM codes for external cause of morbidity and mortality. The most accurate results were obtained when ICD-10-AM codes were assigned using information from both FPA and CN. Comparison of cases coded as unconscious at point-of-call with the associated paramedic assessment highlighted the extra clinical detail obtained when paramedic assessment data are used. Ambulance paramedic assessment data can be aligned with ICD-10-AM and MDC with relative ease, allowing retrospective coding of large datasets. Coding of ambulance data using ICD-10-AM allows for comparison of not only ambulance service users but also with other population groups. WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE TOPIC? There is no reliable and standard coding and categorising system for paramedic assessment data contained in ambulance service databases. WHAT DOES THIS PAPER ADD? This study demonstrates that ambulance paramedic assessment data can be aligned with ICD-10-AM and MDC with relative ease, allowing retrospective coding of large datasets. Representation of ambulance case types using ICD-10-AM-coded information obtained after paramedic assessment is more fine grained and clinically relevant than point-of-call data, which uses caller information before ambulance attendance. WHAT ARE THE IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTITIONERS? This paper describes

The politics of cinematic representation of disability: "the psychiatric gaze".

Science.gov (United States)

Dawn, Ranjita

2014-01-01

Social representations as cultural products rooted in praxis are considered to play dominant role in the structuring of identities or self representations. It is a common belief that people with disabilities analyze their experiences in light of the existing meanings and practices prevalent in society. The paper addresses the matrices of recurring themes in representation of disability and discourses of "normalcy" in films in the nineteenth and twentieth century invoking reductionistic attitude, whereby "disability" becomes a condition subject to neurotypical display and narrative coding in the films in question in the context of India. It will especially seek to analyze the theoretical outlook based on the social model of disability, a perspective that includes specific analyses of the representation of people like themselves in popular culture. A systematic and thorough review of 26 Hindi films ranging from the 1960s to 2010 and six English movies. Apart from these, several books and articles have also been critically reviewed. The paper concludes with the argument that the idea of disability in mainstream contemporary cinema has been created and perceived as a speculative fantasy and for public consumption, thus reflecting the current status of people with disabilities as the present preferred "enigmatic" condition. Implications for Rehabilitation Films play significant role in communicating characters which have deep impact on peoples' perspective of persons with disabilities. Filmmakers need to adopt more intensely researched and more sensitized approach in creating movies centering on people with disabilities. Films need to focus more on the potentialities rather than the shortcomings of people with disabilities. Filmmakers need adequate training in order to recognize the needs of the concerned population and adopt appropriate resources and interventions to address various issues for their rehabilitation into the mainstream society.

The Schrödinger representation and its relation to the holomorphic representation in linear and affine field theory

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Oeckl, Robert

2012-01-01

We establish a precise isomorphism between the Schrödinger representation and the holomorphic representation in linear and affine field theory. In the linear case, this isomorphism is induced by a one-to-one correspondence between complex structures and Schrödinger vacua. In the affine case we obtain similar results, with the role of the vacuum now taken by a whole family of coherent states. In order to establish these results we exhibit a rigorous construction of the Schrödinger representation and use a suitable generalization of the Segal-Bargmann transform. Our construction is based on geometric quantization and applies to any real polarization and its pairing with any Kähler polarization.

Concepts, ontologies, and knowledge representation

CERN Document Server

Jakus, Grega; Omerovic, Sanida; Tomažic, Sašo

2013-01-01

Recording knowledge in a common framework that would make it possible to seamlessly share global knowledge remains an important challenge for researchers. This brief examines several ideas about the representation of knowledge addressing this challenge. A widespread general agreement is followed that states uniform knowledge representation should be achievable by using ontologies populated with concepts. A separate chapter is dedicated to each of the three introduced topics, following a uniform outline: definition, organization, and use. This brief is intended for those who want to get to know

An evaluation and analysis of three dynamic watershed acidification codes (MAGIC, ETD, and ILWAS)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jenne, E.A.; Eary, L.E.; Vail, L.W.; Girvin, D.C.; Liebetrau, A.M.; Hibler, L.F.; Miley, T.B.; Monsour, M.J.

1989-01-01

The US Environmental Protection Agency is currently using the dynamic watershed acidification codes MAGIC, ILWAS, and ETD to assess the potential future impact of the acidic deposition on surface water quality by simulating watershed acid neutralization processes. The reliability of forecasts made with these codes is of considerable concern. The present study evaluates the process formulations (i.e., conceptual and numerical representation of atmospheric, hydrologic geochemical and biogeochemical processes), compares their approaches to calculating acid neutralizing capacity (ANC), and estimates the relative effects (sensitivity) of perturbations in the input data on selected output variables for each code. Input data were drawn from three Adirondack (upstate New York) watersheds: Panther Lake, Clear Pond, and Woods Lake. Code calibration was performed by the developers of the codes. Conclusions focus on summarizing the adequacy of process formulations, differences in ANC simulation among codes and recommendations for further research to increase forecast reliability. 87 refs., 11 figs., 77 tabs.

The neural code for face orientation in the human fusiform face area.

Science.gov (United States)

Ramírez, Fernando M; Cichy, Radoslaw M; Allefeld, Carsten; Haynes, John-Dylan

2014-09-03

Humans recognize faces and objects with high speed and accuracy regardless of their orientation. Recent studies have proposed that orientation invariance in face recognition involves an intermediate representation where neural responses are similar for mirror-symmetric views. Here, we used fMRI, multivariate pattern analysis, and computational modeling to investigate the neural encoding of faces and vehicles at different rotational angles. Corroborating previous studies, we demonstrate a representation of face orientation in the fusiform face-selective area (FFA). We go beyond these studies by showing that this representation is category-selective and tolerant to retinal translation. Critically, by controlling for low-level confounds, we found the representation of orientation in FFA to be compatible with a linear angle code. Aspects of mirror-symmetric coding cannot be ruled out when FFA mean activity levels are considered as a dimension of coding. Finally, we used a parametric family of computational models, involving a biased sampling of view-tuned neuronal clusters, to compare different face angle encoding models. The best fitting model exhibited a predominance of neuronal clusters tuned to frontal views of faces. In sum, our findings suggest a category-selective and monotonic code of face orientation in the human FFA, in line with primate electrophysiology studies that observed mirror-symmetric tuning of neural responses at higher stages of the visual system, beyond the putative homolog of human FFA. Copyright © 2014 the authors 0270-6474/14/3412155-13$15.00/0.

THERAPIE - THErmix-RAps-Plot-InterfacE. A graphic software for representation of THERMIX-2D results with the interactive plot program RAPS

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Duensing, P.; Jahn, W.; Rehm, W.

1986-09-01

The performance of safety analyses for gas-cooled high temperature reactor power plants requires efficient plot codes for the evaluation and representation of computer results. The report describes the coupling between the thermodynamic simulation code THERMIX and the graphic plot code RAPS via the interface program THERAPIE. Especially the structure and the handling of the interface program are explained as well as the dialogue with the plot code. Further options of the colour graphic system are demonstrated for the representation of temperature distributions in components of HTR concepts (HTR-500). (orig.) [de

Human growth hormone-related latrogenic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease: Search for a genetic susceptibility by analysis of the PRNP coding region

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jaegly, A.; Boussin, F.; Deslys, J.P. [CEA/CRSSA/DSV/DPTE, Fontenay-aux-Roses (France)] [and others

1995-05-20

The human PRNP gene encoding PrP is located on chromosome 20 and consists of two exons and a single intron. The open reading frame is entirely fitted into the second exon. Genetic studies indicate that all of the familial and several sporadic forms of TSSEs are associated with mutations in the PRNP 759-bp coding region. Moreover, homozygosity at codon 129, a locus harboring a polymorphism among the general population, was proposed as a genetic susceptibility marker for both sporadic and iatrogenic CJD. To assess whether additional genetic predisposition markers exist in the PRNP gene, the authors sequenced the PRNP coding region of 17 of the 32 French patients who developed a hGH-related CJD.

Facial Expression Recognition via Non-Negative Least-Squares Sparse Coding

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ying Chen

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Sparse coding is an active research subject in signal processing, computer vision, and pattern recognition. A novel method of facial expression recognition via non-negative least squares (NNLS sparse coding is presented in this paper. The NNLS sparse coding is used to form a facial expression classifier. To testify the performance of the presented method, local binary patterns (LBP and the raw pixels are extracted for facial feature representation. Facial expression recognition experiments are conducted on the Japanese Female Facial Expression (JAFFE database. Compared with other widely used methods such as linear support vector machines (SVM, sparse representation-based classifier (SRC, nearest subspace classifier (NSC, K-nearest neighbor (KNN and radial basis function neural networks (RBFNN, the experiment results indicate that the presented NNLS method performs better than other used methods on facial expression recognition tasks.

An in-depth study of sparse codes on abnormality detection

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ren, Huamin; Pan, Hong; Olsen, Søren Ingvor

2016-01-01

Sparse representation has been applied successfully in abnormal event detection, in which the baseline is to learn a dictionary accompanied by sparse codes. While much emphasis is put on discriminative dictionary construction, there are no comparative studies of sparse codes regarding abnormality...... are carried out from various angles to better understand the applicability of sparse codes, including computation time, reconstruction error, sparsity, detection accuracy, and their performance combining various detection methods. The experiment results show that combining OMP codes with maximum coordinate...

Location coding by opponent neural populations in the auditory cortex.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

G Christopher Stecker

2005-03-01

Full Text Available Although the auditory cortex plays a necessary role in sound localization, physiological investigations in the cortex reveal inhomogeneous sampling of auditory space that is difficult to reconcile with localization behavior under the assumption of local spatial coding. Most neurons respond maximally to sounds located far to the left or right side, with few neurons tuned to the frontal midline. Paradoxically, psychophysical studies show optimal spatial acuity across the frontal midline. In this paper, we revisit the problem of inhomogeneous spatial sampling in three fields of cat auditory cortex. In each field, we confirm that neural responses tend to be greatest for lateral positions, but show the greatest modulation for near-midline source locations. Moreover, identification of source locations based on cortical responses shows sharp discrimination of left from right but relatively inaccurate discrimination of locations within each half of space. Motivated by these findings, we explore an opponent-process theory in which sound-source locations are represented by differences in the activity of two broadly tuned channels formed by contra- and ipsilaterally preferring neurons. Finally, we demonstrate a simple model, based on spike-count differences across cortical populations, that provides bias-free, level-invariant localization-and thus also a solution to the "binding problem" of associating spatial information with other nonspatial attributes of sounds.

The Past Is Present: Representations of Parents, Friends, and Romantic Partners Predict Subsequent Romantic Representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Furman, Wyndol; Collibee, Charlene

2018-01-01

This study examined how representations of parent-child relationships, friendships, and past romantic relationships are related to subsequent romantic representations. Two-hundred 10th graders (100 female; M age  = 15.87 years) from diverse neighborhoods in a Western U.S. city were administered questionnaires and were interviewed to assess avoidant and anxious representations of their relationships with parents, friends, and romantic partners. Participants then completed similar questionnaires and interviews about their romantic representations six more times over the next 7.5 years. Growth curve analyses revealed that representations of relationships with parents, friends, and romantic partners each uniquely predicted subsequent romantic representations across development. Consistent with attachment and behavioral systems theory, representations of romantic relationships are revised by representations and experiences in other relationships. © 2016 The Authors. Child Development © 2016 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Coordinating Multiple Representations in a Reform Calculus Textbook

Science.gov (United States)

Chang, Briana L.; Cromley, Jennifer G.; Tran, Nhi

2016-01-01

Coordination of multiple representations (CMR) is widely recognized as a critical skill in mathematics and is frequently demanded in reform calculus textbooks. However, little is known about the prevalence of coordination tasks in such textbooks. We coded 707 instances of CMR in a widely used reform calculus textbook and analyzed the distributions…

Recognition of facial expressions by cortical multi-scale line and edge coding

OpenAIRE

Sousa, R.; Rodrigues, J. M. F.; du Buf, J. M. H.

2010-01-01

Face-to-face communications between humans involve emotions, which often are unconsciously conveyed by facial expressions and body gestures. Intelligent human-machine interfaces, for example in cognitive robotics, need to recognize emotions. This paper addresses facial expressions and their neural correlates on the basis of a model of the visual cortex: the multi-scale line and edge coding. The recognition model links the cortical representation with Paul Ekman's Action Units which are relate...

When sparse coding meets ranking: a joint framework for learning sparse codes and ranking scores

KAUST Repository

Wang, Jim Jing-Yan

2017-06-28

Sparse coding, which represents a data point as a sparse reconstruction code with regard to a dictionary, has been a popular data representation method. Meanwhile, in database retrieval problems, learning the ranking scores from data points plays an important role. Up to now, these two problems have always been considered separately, assuming that data coding and ranking are two independent and irrelevant problems. However, is there any internal relationship between sparse coding and ranking score learning? If yes, how to explore and make use of this internal relationship? In this paper, we try to answer these questions by developing the first joint sparse coding and ranking score learning algorithm. To explore the local distribution in the sparse code space, and also to bridge coding and ranking problems, we assume that in the neighborhood of each data point, the ranking scores can be approximated from the corresponding sparse codes by a local linear function. By considering the local approximation error of ranking scores, the reconstruction error and sparsity of sparse coding, and the query information provided by the user, we construct a unified objective function for learning of sparse codes, the dictionary and ranking scores. We further develop an iterative algorithm to solve this optimization problem.

Adaptation in Coding by Large Populations of Neurons in the Retina

Science.gov (United States)

Ioffe, Mark L.

A comprehensive theory of neural computation requires an understanding of the statistical properties of the neural population code. The focus of this work is the experimental study and theoretical analysis of the statistical properties of neural activity in the tiger salamander retina. This is an accessible yet complex system, for which we control the visual input and record from a substantial portion--greater than a half--of the ganglion cell population generating the spiking output. Our experiments probe adaptation of the retina to visual statistics: a central feature of sensory systems which have to adjust their limited dynamic range to a far larger space of possible inputs. In Chapter 1 we place our work in context with a brief overview of the relevant background. In Chapter 2 we describe the experimental methodology of recording from 100+ ganglion cells in the tiger salamander retina. In Chapter 3 we first present the measurements of adaptation of individual cells to changes in stimulation statistics and then investigate whether pairwise correlations in fluctuations of ganglion cell activity change across different stimulation conditions. We then transition to a study of the population-level probability distribution of the retinal response captured with maximum-entropy models. Convergence of the model inference is presented in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5 we first test the empirical presence of a phase transition in such models fitting the retinal response to different experimental conditions, and then proceed to develop other characterizations which are sensitive to complexity in the interaction matrix. This includes an analysis of the dynamics of sampling at finite temperature, which demonstrates a range of subtle attractor-like properties in the energy landscape. These are largely conserved when ambient illumination is varied 1000-fold, a result not necessarily apparent from the measured low-order statistics of the distribution. Our results form a consistent

The frequency of a disease-causing point mutation in the gene coding for medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase in sudden infant death syndrome

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Banner, Jytte; Gregersen, N; Kølvraa, S

1993-01-01

A number of rare inherited metabolic disorders are known to lead to death in infancy. Deficiency of medium-chain acyl CoA dehydrogenase has, on clinical grounds, been related particularly to sudden infant death syndrome. The contribution of this disorder to the etiology of sudden infant death...... syndrome is still a matter of controversy. The present study investigated 120 well-defined cases of sudden infant death syndrome in order to detect the frequency of the most common disease-causing point mutation in the gene coding for medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (G985) compared with the frequency...... in the general population. A highly specific polymerase chain reaction assay was applied on dried blood spots. No over-representation of homo- or heterozygosity for G985 appears to exist in such a strictly defined population, for which reason it may be more relevant to look at a broader spectrum of clinical...

Using clinician text notes in electronic medical record data to validate transgender-related diagnosis codes.

Science.gov (United States)

Blosnich, John R; Cashy, John; Gordon, Adam J; Shipherd, Jillian C; Kauth, Michael R; Brown, George R; Fine, Michael J

2018-04-04

Transgender individuals are vulnerable to negative health risks and outcomes, but research remains limited because data sources, such as electronic medical records (EMRs), lack standardized collection of gender identity information. Most EMR do not include the gold standard of self-identified gender identity, but International Classification of Diseases (ICDs) includes diagnostic codes indicating transgender-related clinical services. However, it is unclear if these codes can indicate transgender status. The objective of this study was to determine the extent to which patients' clinician notes in EMR contained transgender-related terms that could corroborate ICD-coded transgender identity. Data are from the US Department of Veterans Affairs Corporate Data Warehouse. Transgender patients were defined by the presence of ICD9 and ICD10 codes associated with transgender-related clinical services, and a 3:1 comparison group of nontransgender patients was drawn. Patients' clinician text notes were extracted and searched for transgender-related words and phrases. Among 7560 patients defined as transgender based on ICD codes, the search algorithm identified 6753 (89.3%) with transgender-related terms. Among 22 072 patients defined as nontransgender without ICD codes, 246 (1.1%) had transgender-related terms; after review, 11 patients were identified as transgender, suggesting a 0.05% false negative rate. Using ICD-defined transgender status can facilitate health services research when self-identified gender identity data are not available in EMR.

Predictive coding of dynamical variables in balanced spiking networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Boerlin, Martin; Machens, Christian K; Denève, Sophie

2013-01-01

Two observations about the cortex have puzzled neuroscientists for a long time. First, neural responses are highly variable. Second, the level of excitation and inhibition received by each neuron is tightly balanced at all times. Here, we demonstrate that both properties are necessary consequences of neural networks that represent information efficiently in their spikes. We illustrate this insight with spiking networks that represent dynamical variables. Our approach is based on two assumptions: We assume that information about dynamical variables can be read out linearly from neural spike trains, and we assume that neurons only fire a spike if that improves the representation of the dynamical variables. Based on these assumptions, we derive a network of leaky integrate-and-fire neurons that is able to implement arbitrary linear dynamical systems. We show that the membrane voltage of the neurons is equivalent to a prediction error about a common population-level signal. Among other things, our approach allows us to construct an integrator network of spiking neurons that is robust against many perturbations. Most importantly, neural variability in our networks cannot be equated to noise. Despite exhibiting the same single unit properties as widely used population code models (e.g. tuning curves, Poisson distributed spike trains), balanced networks are orders of magnitudes more reliable. Our approach suggests that spikes do matter when considering how the brain computes, and that the reliability of cortical representations could have been strongly underestimated.

Synaptic E-I Balance Underlies Efficient Neural Coding.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, Shanglin; Yu, Yuguo

2018-01-01

Both theoretical and experimental evidence indicate that synaptic excitation and inhibition in the cerebral cortex are well-balanced during the resting state and sensory processing. Here, we briefly summarize the evidence for how neural circuits are adjusted to achieve this balance. Then, we discuss how such excitatory and inhibitory balance shapes stimulus representation and information propagation, two basic functions of neural coding. We also point out the benefit of adopting such a balance during neural coding. We conclude that excitatory and inhibitory balance may be a fundamental mechanism underlying efficient coding.

Adjudicating between face-coding models with individual-face fMRI responses.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Johan D Carlin

2017-07-01

Full Text Available The perceptual representation of individual faces is often explained with reference to a norm-based face space. In such spaces, individuals are encoded as vectors where identity is primarily conveyed by direction and distinctiveness by eccentricity. Here we measured human fMRI responses and psychophysical similarity judgments of individual face exemplars, which were generated as realistic 3D animations using a computer-graphics model. We developed and evaluated multiple neurobiologically plausible computational models, each of which predicts a representational distance matrix and a regional-mean activation profile for 24 face stimuli. In the fusiform face area, a face-space coding model with sigmoidal ramp tuning provided a better account of the data than one based on exemplar tuning. However, an image-processing model with weighted banks of Gabor filters performed similarly. Accounting for the data required the inclusion of a measurement-level population averaging mechanism that approximates how fMRI voxels locally average distinct neuronal tunings. Our study demonstrates the importance of comparing multiple models and of modeling the measurement process in computational neuroimaging.

Transposed-letter priming of prelexical orthographic representations.

Science.gov (United States)

Kinoshita, Sachiko; Norris, Dennis

2009-01-01

A prime generated by transposing two internal letters (e.g., jugde) produces strong priming of the original word (judge). In lexical decision, this transposed-letter (TL) priming effect is generally weak or absent for nonword targets; thus, it is unclear whether the origin of this effect is lexical or prelexical. The authors describe the Bayesian Reader theory of masked priming (D. Norris & S. Kinoshita, 2008), which explains why nonwords do not show priming in lexical decision but why they do in the cross-case same-different task. This analysis is followed by 3 experiments that show that priming in this task is not based on low-level perceptual similarity between the prime and target, or on phonology, to make the case that priming is based on prelexical orthographic representation. The authors then use this task to demonstrate equivalent TL priming effects for nonwords and words. The results are interpreted as the first reliable evidence based on the masked priming procedure that letter position is not coded absolutely within the prelexical, orthographic representation. The implications of the results for current letter position coding schemes are discussed.

Key features of human episodic recollection in the cross-episode retrieval of rat hippocampus representations of space.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eduard Kelemen

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Neurophysiological studies focus on memory retrieval as a reproduction of what was experienced and have established that neural discharge is replayed to express memory. However, cognitive psychology has established that recollection is not a verbatim replay of stored information. Recollection is constructive, the product of memory retrieval cues, the information stored in memory, and the subject's state of mind. We discovered key features of constructive recollection embedded in the rat CA1 ensemble discharge during an active avoidance task. Rats learned two task variants, one with the arena stable, the other with it rotating; each variant defined a distinct behavioral episode. During the rotating episode, the ensemble discharge of CA1 principal neurons was dynamically organized to concurrently represent space in two distinct codes. The code for spatial reference frame switched rapidly between representing the rat's current location in either the stationary spatial frame of the room or the rotating frame of the arena. The code for task variant switched less frequently between a representation of the current rotating episode and the stable episode from the rat's past. The characteristics and interplay of these two hippocampal codes revealed three key properties of constructive recollection. (1 Although the ensemble representations of the stable and rotating episodes were distinct, ensemble discharge during rotation occasionally resembled the stable condition, demonstrating cross-episode retrieval of the representation of the remote, stable episode. (2 This cross-episode retrieval at the level of the code for task variant was more likely when the rotating arena was about to match its orientation in the stable episode. (3 The likelihood of cross-episode retrieval was influenced by preretrieval information that was signaled at the level of the code for spatial reference frame. Thus key features of episodic recollection manifest in rat hippocampal

[Attachment Representation and Emotion Regulation in Patients with Burnout Syndrome].

Science.gov (United States)

Söllner, Wolfgang; Behringer, Johanna; Böhme, Stephanie; Stein, Barbara; Reiner, Iris; Spangler, Gottfried

2016-06-01

Burnout describes a syndrome of exhaustion resulting from insufficient coping with work-related distress. We investigated if patients that are being clinically treated for burnout show insecure and unresolved attachment representation more often compared with healthy controls. 50 out of 60 consecutive burnout patients participated in the study. Mental representation of attachment was measured by using the Adult Attachment Interview. Additionally, we administered the Self Report Questionnaire to Assess Emotional Experience and Emotion Regulation and several burnout specific questionnaires. A population sample was used as control group. Burnout patients were classified as insecurely attached significantly more often than controls. Unresolved attachment status concerning loss or trauma was found significantly more often within the burnout sample. Patients with insecure attachment representation reported a lower subjective significance of work. Patients with avoidant insecure attachment showed more depersonalisation. Patients with unresolved loss/trauma reported less social support. They showed more passive-negative emotion experience and emotion regulation characterized by externalization. The results of the study suggest that an insecure or unresolved attachment representation might constitute an intrapersonal risk factor for the development of burnout syndrome. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Group-sparse representation with dictionary learning for medical image denoising and fusion.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Shutao; Yin, Haitao; Fang, Leyuan

2012-12-01

Recently, sparse representation has attracted a lot of interest in various areas. However, the standard sparse representation does not consider the intrinsic structure, i.e., the nonzero elements occur in clusters, called group sparsity. Furthermore, there is no dictionary learning method for group sparse representation considering the geometrical structure of space spanned by atoms. In this paper, we propose a novel dictionary learning method, called Dictionary Learning with Group Sparsity and Graph Regularization (DL-GSGR). First, the geometrical structure of atoms is modeled as the graph regularization. Then, combining group sparsity and graph regularization, the DL-GSGR is presented, which is solved by alternating the group sparse coding and dictionary updating. In this way, the group coherence of learned dictionary can be enforced small enough such that any signal can be group sparse coded effectively. Finally, group sparse representation with DL-GSGR is applied to 3-D medical image denoising and image fusion. Specifically, in 3-D medical image denoising, a 3-D processing mechanism (using the similarity among nearby slices) and temporal regularization (to perverse the correlations across nearby slices) are exploited. The experimental results on 3-D image denoising and image fusion demonstrate the superiority of our proposed denoising and fusion approaches.

L1 and L2 Picture Naming in Mandarin-English Bilinguals: A Test of Bilingual Dual Coding Theory

Science.gov (United States)

Jared, Debra; Poh, Rebecca Pei Yun; Paivio, Allan

2013-01-01

This study examined the nature of bilinguals' conceptual representations and the links from these representations to words in L1 and L2. Specifically, we tested an assumption of the Bilingual Dual Coding Theory that conceptual representations include image representations, and that learning two languages in separate contexts can result in…

Time efficient signed Vedic multiplier using redundant binary representation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ranjan Kumar Barik

2017-03-01

Full Text Available This study presents a high-speed signed Vedic multiplier (SVM architecture using redundant binary (RB representation in Urdhva Tiryagbhyam (UT sutra. This is the first ever effort towards extension of Vedic algorithms to the signed numbers. The proposed multiplier architecture solves the carry propagation issue in UT sutra, as carry free addition is possible in RB representation. The proposed design is coded in VHDL and synthesised in Xilinx ISE 14.4 of various FPGA devices. The proposed SVM architecture has better speed performances as compared with various state-of-the-art conventional as well as Vedic architectures.

Volta-Based Cells Materials Chemical Multiple Representation to Improve Ability of Student Representation

Science.gov (United States)

Helsy, I.; Maryamah; Farida, I.; Ramdhani, M. A.

2017-09-01

This study aimed to describe the application of teaching materials, analyze the increase in the ability of students to connect the three levels of representation and student responses after application of multiple representations based teaching materials chemistry. The method used quasi one-group pretest-posttest design to 71 students. The results showed the application of teaching materials carried 88% with very good category. A significant increase ability to connect the three levels of representation of students after the application of multiple representations based teaching materials chemistry with t-value > t-crit (11.402 > 1.991). Recapitulation N-gain pretest and posttest showed relatively similar for all groups is 0.6 criterion being achievement. Students gave a positive response to the application of multiple representations based teaching materials chemistry. Students agree teaching materials used in teaching chemistry (88%), and agrees teaching materials to provide convenience in connecting the three levels of representation (95%).

Dynamic divisive normalization predicts time-varying value coding in decision-related circuits.

Science.gov (United States)

Louie, Kenway; LoFaro, Thomas; Webb, Ryan; Glimcher, Paul W

2014-11-26

Normalization is a widespread neural computation, mediating divisive gain control in sensory processing and implementing a context-dependent value code in decision-related frontal and parietal cortices. Although decision-making is a dynamic process with complex temporal characteristics, most models of normalization are time-independent and little is known about the dynamic interaction of normalization and choice. Here, we show that a simple differential equation model of normalization explains the characteristic phasic-sustained pattern of cortical decision activity and predicts specific normalization dynamics: value coding during initial transients, time-varying value modulation, and delayed onset of contextual information. Empirically, we observe these predicted dynamics in saccade-related neurons in monkey lateral intraparietal cortex. Furthermore, such models naturally incorporate a time-weighted average of past activity, implementing an intrinsic reference-dependence in value coding. These results suggest that a single network mechanism can explain both transient and sustained decision activity, emphasizing the importance of a dynamic view of normalization in neural coding. Copyright © 2014 the authors 0270-6474/14/3416046-12$15.00/0.

Gravity influences the visual representation of object tilt in parietal cortex.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosenberg, Ari; Angelaki, Dora E

2014-10-22

Sensory systems encode the environment in egocentric (e.g., eye, head, or body) reference frames, creating inherently unstable representations that shift and rotate as we move. However, it is widely speculated that the brain transforms these signals into an allocentric, gravity-centered representation of the world that is stable and independent of the observer's spatial pose. Where and how this representation may be achieved is currently unknown. Here we demonstrate that a subpopulation of neurons in the macaque caudal intraparietal area (CIP) visually encodes object tilt in nonegocentric coordinates defined relative to the gravitational vector. Neuronal responses to the tilt of a visually presented planar surface were measured with the monkey in different spatial orientations (upright and rolled left/right ear down) and then compared. This revealed a continuum of representations in which planar tilt was encoded in a gravity-centered reference frame in approximately one-tenth of the comparisons, intermediate reference frames ranging between gravity-centered and egocentric in approximately two-tenths of the comparisons, and in an egocentric reference frame in less than half of the comparisons. Altogether, almost half of the comparisons revealed a shift in the preferred tilt and/or a gain change consistent with encoding object orientation in nonegocentric coordinates. Through neural network modeling, we further show that a purely gravity-centered representation of object tilt can be achieved directly from the population activity of CIP-like units. These results suggest that area CIP may play a key role in creating a stable, allocentric representation of the environment defined relative to an "earth-vertical" direction. Copyright © 2014 the authors 0270-6474/14/3414170-11$15.00/0.

Value Representations

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Rasmussen, Majken Kirkegaard; Petersen, Marianne Graves

2011-01-01

Stereotypic presumptions about gender affect the design process, both in relation to how users are understood and how products are designed. As a way to decrease the influence of stereotypic presumptions in design process, we propose not to disregard the aspect of gender in the design process......, as the perspective brings valuable insights on different approaches to technology, but instead to view gender through a value lens. Contributing to this perspective, we have developed Value Representations as a design-oriented instrument for staging a reflective dialogue with users. Value Representations...

Emerging category representation in the visual forebrain hierarchy of pigeons (Columba livia).

Science.gov (United States)

Azizi, Amir Hossein; Pusch, Roland; Koenen, Charlotte; Klatt, Sebastian; Bröcker, Franziska; Thiele, Samuel; Kellermann, Janosch; Güntürkün, Onur; Cheng, Sen

2018-06-06

Recognizing and categorizing visual stimuli are cognitive functions vital for survival, and an important feature of visual systems in primates as well as in birds. Visual stimuli are processed along the ventral visual pathway. At every stage in the hierarchy, neurons respond selectively to more complex features, transforming the population representation of the stimuli. It is therefore easier to read-out category information in higher visual areas. While explicit category representations have been observed in the primate brain, less is known on equivalent processes in the avian brain. Even though their brain anatomies are radically different, it has been hypothesized that visual object representations are comparable across mammals and birds. In the present study, we investigated category representations in the pigeon visual forebrain using recordings from single cells responding to photographs of real-world objects. Using a linear classifier, we found that the population activity in the visual associative area mesopallium ventrolaterale (MVL) distinguishes between animate and inanimate objects, although this distinction is not required by the task. By contrast, a population of cells in the entopallium, a region that is lower in the hierarchy of visual areas and that is related to the primate extrastriate cortex, lacked this information. A model that pools responses of simple cells, which function as edge detectors, can account for the animate vs. inanimate categorization in the MVL, but performance in the model is based on different features than in MVL. Therefore, processing in MVL cells is very likely more abstract than simple computations on the output of edge detectors. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Young Children's Representations of Groups of Objects: The Relationship between Abstraction and Representation.

Science.gov (United States)

Kato, Yasuhiko; Kamii, Constance; Ozaki, Kyoko; Nagahiro, Mariko

2002-01-01

Interviews 60 Japanese children between the ages of 3 and 7 years to investigate the relationship between levels of abstraction and representation. Indicates that abstraction and representation are closely related. Implies that educators need to focus more on the mental relationships children make because the meaning children can give to…

Representation and redistribution in federations.

Science.gov (United States)

Dragu, Tiberiu; Rodden, Jonathan

2011-05-24

Many of the world's most populous democracies are political unions composed of states or provinces that are unequally represented in the national legislature. Scattered empirical studies, most of them focusing on the United States, have discovered that overrepresented states appear to receive larger shares of the national budget. Although this relationship is typically attributed to bargaining advantages associated with greater legislative representation, an important threat to empirical identification stems from the fact that the representation scheme was chosen by the provinces. Thus, it is possible that representation and fiscal transfers are both determined by other characteristics of the provinces in a specific country. To obtain an improved estimate of the relationship between representation and redistribution, we collect and analyze provincial-level data from nine federations over several decades, taking advantage of the historical process through which federations formed and expanded. Controlling for a variety of country- and province-level factors and using a variety of estimation techniques, we show that overrepresented provinces in political unions around the world are rather dramatically favored in the distribution of resources.

Neuronal codes for visual perception and memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Quian Quiroga, Rodrigo

2016-03-01

In this review, I describe and contrast the representation of stimuli in visual cortical areas and in the medial temporal lobe (MTL). While cortex is characterized by a distributed and implicit coding that is optimal for recognition and storage of semantic information, the MTL shows a much sparser and explicit coding of specific concepts that is ideal for episodic memory. I will describe the main characteristics of the coding in the MTL by the so-called concept cells and will then propose a model of the formation and recall of episodic memory based on partially overlapping assemblies. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Longitudinal associations between maternal disrupted representations, maternal interactive behavior and infant attachment: a comparison between full-term and preterm dyads.

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, R A S; Hoffenkamp, H N; Tooten, A; Braeken, J; Vingerhoets, A J J M; van Bakel, H J A

2015-04-01

This prospective study examined whether or not a mother's representations of her infant were more often disrupted after premature childbirth. Furthermore, the study examined if different components of maternal interactive behavior mediated the relation between maternal disrupted representations and infant attachment. The participants were mothers of full-term (n = 75), moderately preterm (n = 68) and very preterm infants (n = 67). Maternal representations were assessed by the Working Model of the Child Interview at 6 months post-partum. Maternal interactive behavior was evaluated at 6 and 24 months post-partum, using the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Early Care Research Network mother-infant observation scales. Infant attachment was observed at 24 months post-partum and was coded by the Attachment Q-Set. The results reveal that a premature childbirth does not necessarily generate disrupted maternal representations of the infant. Furthermore, maternal interactive behavior appears to be an important mechanism through which maternal representations influence the development of infant attachment in full-term and preterm infants. Early assessment of maternal representations can identify mother-infant dyads at risk, in full-term and preterm samples.

On Representation in Information Theory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joseph E. Brenner

2011-09-01

Full Text Available Semiotics is widely applied in theories of information. Following the original triadic characterization of reality by Peirce, the linguistic processes involved in information—production, transmission, reception, and understanding—would all appear to be interpretable in terms of signs and their relations to their objects. Perhaps the most important of these relations is that of the representation-one, entity, standing for or representing some other. For example, an index—one of the three major kinds of signs—is said to represent something by being directly related to its object. My position, however, is that the concept of symbolic representations having such roles in information, as intermediaries, is fraught with the same difficulties as in representational theories of mind. I have proposed an extension of logic to complex real phenomena, including mind and information (Logic in Reality; LIR, most recently at the 4th International Conference on the Foundations of Information Science (Beijing, August, 2010. LIR provides explanations for the evolution of complex processes, including information, that do not require any entities other than the processes themselves. In this paper, I discuss the limitations of the standard relation of representation. I argue that more realistic pictures of informational systems can be provided by reference to information as an energetic process, following the categorial ontology of LIR. This approach enables naïve, anti-realist conceptions of anti-representationalism to be avoided, and enables an approach to both information and meaning in the same novel logical framework.

Drawings as Representations of Children's Conceptions

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Ehrlen, Karin

2009-01-01

Drawings are often used to obtain an idea of children's conceptions. Doing so takes for granted an unambiguous relation between conceptions and their representations in drawings. This study was undertaken to gain knowledge of the relation between children's conceptions and their representation of these conceptions in drawings. A theory of…

Utilization of the MCNP-3A code for criticality safety analysis

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Maragni, M.G.; Moreira, J.M.L.

1996-01-01

In the last decade, Brazil started to operate facilities for processing and storing uranium in different forms. The necessity of criticality safety analysis appeared in the design phase of the uranium pilot process plants and also in the licensing of transportation and storage of fissile materials. The 2-MW research reactor and the Angra I power plant also required criticality safety assessments because their spent-fuel storage was approaching full-capacity utilization. The criticality safety analysis in Brazil has been based on KENO IV code calculations, which present some difficulties for correct geometry representation. The MCNP-3A code is not reported to be used frequently for criticality safety analysis in Brazil, but its good geometry representation makes it a possible tool for treating problems of complex geometry. A set of benchmark tests was performed to verify its applicability for criticality safety analysis in Brazil. This paper presents several benchmark tests aimed at selecting a set of options available in the MCNP-3A code that would be adequate for criticality safety analysis. The MCNP-3A code is also compared with the KENO-IV code regarding its performance for criticality safety analysis

Building Program Vector Representations for Deep Learning

OpenAIRE

Mou, Lili; Li, Ge; Liu, Yuxuan; Peng, Hao; Jin, Zhi; Xu, Yan; Zhang, Lu

2014-01-01

Deep learning has made significant breakthroughs in various fields of artificial intelligence. Advantages of deep learning include the ability to capture highly complicated features, weak involvement of human engineering, etc. However, it is still virtually impossible to use deep learning to analyze programs since deep architectures cannot be trained effectively with pure back propagation. In this pioneering paper, we propose the "coding criterion" to build program vector representations, whi...

Periodic Discordance Between Vote Equality and Representational Equality in the United States

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sarah K. Cowan

2015-08-01

Full Text Available American democracy has two central values that are often in tension: vote equality, that each vote has equal influence, and representational equality, that each elected official represents equal numbers of people. The electoral standard of “one person, one vote” ensures representational equality, and that often ensures vote equality. This relationship fails, however, under certain demographic conditions, namely, when a large, non-enfranchised population resides unevenly across jurisdictions. Then, representational equality is preserved and vote equality is violated. Prior to women’s suffrage, for example, western states had relatively fewer women than the remainder of the country, contributing to gross vote inequality, though rectified through extension of the franchise. Given recent high rates of immigration to some states, I ask whether the two values are in tension. I find that they are, and quantify the electoral consequences of this disjuncture at 13 House seats in 2010.

Rank Order Coding: a Retinal Information Decoding Strategy Revealed by Large-Scale Multielectrode Array Retinal Recordings.

Science.gov (United States)

Portelli, Geoffrey; Barrett, John M; Hilgen, Gerrit; Masquelier, Timothée; Maccione, Alessandro; Di Marco, Stefano; Berdondini, Luca; Kornprobst, Pierre; Sernagor, Evelyne

2016-01-01

How a population of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) encodes the visual scene remains an open question. Going beyond individual RGC coding strategies, results in salamander suggest that the relative latencies of a RGC pair encode spatial information. Thus, a population code based on this concerted spiking could be a powerful mechanism to transmit visual information rapidly and efficiently. Here, we tested this hypothesis in mouse by recording simultaneous light-evoked responses from hundreds of RGCs, at pan-retinal level, using a new generation of large-scale, high-density multielectrode array consisting of 4096 electrodes. Interestingly, we did not find any RGCs exhibiting a clear latency tuning to the stimuli, suggesting that in mouse, individual RGC pairs may not provide sufficient information. We show that a significant amount of information is encoded synergistically in the concerted spiking of large RGC populations. Thus, the RGC population response described with relative activities, or ranks, provides more relevant information than classical independent spike count- or latency- based codes. In particular, we report for the first time that when considering the relative activities across the whole population, the wave of first stimulus-evoked spikes is an accurate indicator of stimulus content. We show that this coding strategy coexists with classical neural codes, and that it is more efficient and faster. Overall, these novel observations suggest that already at the level of the retina, concerted spiking provides a reliable and fast strategy to rapidly transmit new visual scenes.

Quantum group and Manin plane related to a coloured braid group representation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Basu Mallick, B.

1993-07-01

By considering 'coloured' braid group representation we have obtained a quantum group, which reduces to the standards GL q (2) and GL pq (2) cases at some particular limits of the 'colour' parameters. In spite of quite complicated nature, all of these new quantum group relations can be expressed neatly in the Heisenberg-Weyl form, for a nontrivial choice of the basis elements. Furthermore, it is possible to associate invariant Manin planes, parametrized by the 'colour' variables, with such quantum group structure. (author). 26 refs

[Social representations of Mexican pregnant teenagers about the puerperal care, lactation, and newborn care].

Science.gov (United States)

Franco-Ramírez, Julieta A; Cabrera-Pivaral, Carlos E; Zárate-Guerrero, Gabriel; Franco-Chávez, Sergio A; Covarrubias-Bermúdez, María Á; Zavala-González, Marco A

2018-01-01

Puerperal care and feeding of the newborn are guided by entrenched cultural meanings between women, so it is important to know and identify how they are acquired and perpetuated. Regarding this knowledge, the social representations that Mexican pregnant teenagers have about puerperium, lactation and newborn care were studied. An interpretative study was made based on principles of the theory of social representations. Interviews were conducted to obtain information from 30 Mexican adolescents who attended prenatal care at the gynecological obstetrics area in a second-level hospital during 2015. Classical content analysis strategies were applied to analyze the information; this process consisted of coding and categorizing information. A conceptual map was also developed to describe the social representations found. In this study, 190 codes and three social representations were identified: "breastfeeding is a practice based on myths", "newborns are fragile" and "mother and child must be synchronized". Three social representations were identified that explain the practices of adolescents towards breastfeeding and the care of them and their children, which were acquired through family communication and strengthened by the need for support due to the temporary or permanent absence of the couple, personal crises motivated by bodily changes, fear of new modifications due to breastfeeding and ignorance about how carry out breastfeeding and care during the puerperium. Copyright: © 2018 Permanyer.

Pedagogical Affordances of Multiple External Representations in Scientific Processes

Science.gov (United States)

Wu, Hsin-Kai; Puntambekar, Sadhana

2012-01-01

Multiple external representations (MERs) have been widely used in science teaching and learning. Theories such as dual coding theory and cognitive flexibility theory have been developed to explain why the use of MERs is beneficial to learning, but they do not provide much information on pedagogical issues such as how and in what conditions MERs…

Greedy vs. L1 convex optimization in sparse coding

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ren, Huamin; Pan, Hong; Olsen, Søren Ingvor

2015-01-01

Sparse representation has been applied successfully in many image analysis applications, including abnormal event detection, in which a baseline is to learn a dictionary from the training data and detect anomalies from its sparse codes. During this procedure, sparse codes which can be achieved...... solutions. Considering the property of abnormal event detection, i.e., only normal videos are used as training data due to practical reasons, effective codes in classification application may not perform well in abnormality detection. Therefore, we compare the sparse codes and comprehensively evaluate...... their performance from various aspects to better understand their applicability, including computation time, reconstruction error, sparsity, detection...

War of ontology worlds: mathematics, computer code, or Esperanto?

Science.gov (United States)

Rzhetsky, Andrey; Evans, James A

2011-09-01

The use of structured knowledge representations-ontologies and terminologies-has become standard in biomedicine. Definitions of ontologies vary widely, as do the values and philosophies that underlie them. In seeking to make these views explicit, we conducted and summarized interviews with a dozen leading ontologists. Their views clustered into three broad perspectives that we summarize as mathematics, computer code, and Esperanto. Ontology as mathematics puts the ultimate premium on rigor and logic, symmetry and consistency of representation across scientific subfields, and the inclusion of only established, non-contradictory knowledge. Ontology as computer code focuses on utility and cultivates diversity, fitting ontologies to their purpose. Like computer languages C++, Prolog, and HTML, the code perspective holds that diverse applications warrant custom designed ontologies. Ontology as Esperanto focuses on facilitating cross-disciplinary communication, knowledge cross-referencing, and computation across datasets from diverse communities. We show how these views align with classical divides in science and suggest how a synthesis of their concerns could strengthen the next generation of biomedical ontologies.

Biases in detection of apparent "weekend effect" on outcome with administrative coding data: population based study of stroke.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Linxin; Rothwell, Peter M

2016-05-16

 To determine the accuracy of coding of admissions for stroke on weekdays versus weekends and any impact on apparent outcome.  Prospective population based stroke incidence study and a scoping review of previous studies of weekend effects in stroke.  Primary and secondary care of all individuals registered with nine general practices in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom (OXVASC, the Oxford Vascular Study).  All patients with clinically confirmed acute stroke in OXVASC identified with multiple overlapping methods of ascertainment in 2002-14 versus all acute stroke admissions identified by hospital diagnostic and mortality coding alone during the same period.  Accuracy of administrative coding data for all patients with confirmed stroke admitted to hospital in OXVASC. Difference between rates of "false positive" or "false negative" coding for weekday and weekend admissions. Impact of inaccurate coding on apparent case fatality at 30 days in weekday versus weekend admissions. Weekend effects on outcomes in patients with confirmed stroke admitted to hospital in OXVASC and impacts of other potential biases compared with those in the scoping review.  Among 92 728 study population, 2373 episodes of acute stroke were ascertained in OXVASC, of which 826 (34.8%) mainly minor events were managed without hospital admission, 60 (2.5%) occurred out of the area or abroad, and 195 (8.2%) occurred in hospital during an admission for a different reason. Of 1292 local hospital admissions for acute stroke, 973 (75.3%) were correctly identified by administrative coding. There was no bias in distribution of weekend versus weekday admission of the 319 strokes missed by coding. Of 1693 admissions for stroke identified by coding, 1055 (62.3%) were confirmed to be acute strokes after case adjudication. Among the 638 false positive coded cases, patients were more likely to be admitted on weekdays than at weekends (536 (41.0%) v 102 (26.5%); Pcoded acute stroke admissions and false positive

Poor representation of Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans in medicine.

Science.gov (United States)

Rodriguez, José E; Campbell, Kendall M; Adelson, Wendi J

2015-04-01

In this article, the authors discuss how various systems in medicine are limiting representation of blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans. Flat and decreasing percentages of Underrepresented Minorities in Medicine (URMM), especially in the black and Native American populations, is concerning for family medicine since members from URMM groups care for minority and underserved populations in greater numbers. Underrepresentation is not only noted in the medical community but also in our medical schools when it comes to numbers of URMM faculty. The changing definition of "disadvantaged" in medical school admissions has also played a part in limiting URMM representation. In addition, the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) excludes black, Latino, and Native American students in greater numbers. The authors support these arguments with evidence from the medical literature. Although unintentional, these systems effectively limit representation of blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans in medicine. Effective changes are suggested and can be implemented to ensure that URMM individuals have equal representation in careers in medicine.

Racial Representation in Physical Education Textbooks for Secondary Schools

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

María Inés Táboas-Pais

2015-03-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this article is to examine the representation of race through images that are published in Spanish physical education textbooks for secondary schools and to offer an insight into students’ beliefs related to racial stereotypes in physical education. The sample was composed of 2,583 images and 87 secondary school pupils. The analysis was carried out through the elaboration of an ad hoc coding scheme. The results showed that people whose appearance is similar to the in-group predominate. The kind of physical activity, the field, space, and level of competence vary according to race. The textbooks analyzed in this study engender a stigmatized vision of racial diversity, and the images reproduce and reinforce racial prejudice.

The representations of Lie groups and geometric quantizations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhao Qiang

1998-01-01

In this paper we discuss the relation between representations of Lie groups and geometric quantizations. A series of representations of Lie groups are constructed by geometric quantization of coadjoint orbits. Particularly, all representations of compact Lie groups, holomorphic discrete series of representations and spherical representations of reductive Lie groups are constructed by geometric quantizations of elliptic and hyperbolic coadjoint orbits. (orig.)

Inventory of Safety-related Codes and Standards for Energy Storage Systems with some Experiences related to Approval and Acceptance

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Conover, David R.

2014-09-11

The purpose of this document is to identify laws, rules, model codes, codes, standards, regulations, specifications (CSR) related to safety that could apply to stationary energy storage systems (ESS) and experiences to date securing approval of ESS in relation to CSR. This information is intended to assist in securing approval of ESS under current CSR and to identification of new CRS or revisions to existing CRS and necessary supporting research and documentation that can foster the deployment of safe ESS.

Indigenous obesity in the news: a media analysis of news representation of obesity in Australia's Indigenous population.

Science.gov (United States)

Islam, Salwa; Fitzgerald, Lisa

2016-01-01

High rates of obesity are a significant issue amongst Indigenous populations in many countries around the world. Media framing of issues can play a critical role in shaping public opinion and government policy. A broad range of media analyses have been conducted on various aspects of obesity, however media representation of Indigenous obesity remains unexplored. In this study we investigate how obesity in Australia's Indigenous population is represented in newsprint media coverage. Media articles published between 2007 and 2014 were analysed for the distribution and extent of coverage over time and across Indigenous and mainstream media sources using quantitative content analysis. Representation of the causes and solutions of Indigenous obesity and framing in text and image content was examined using qualitative framing analysis. Media coverage of Indigenous obesity was very limited with no clear trends in reporting over time or across sources. The single Indigenous media source was the second largest contributor to the media discourse of this issue. Structural causes/origins were most often cited and individual solutions were comparatively overrepresented. A range of frames were employed across the media sources. All images reinforced textual framing except for one article where the image depicted individual factors whereas the text referred to structural determinants. This study provides a starting point for an important area of research that needs further investigation. The findings highlight the importance of alternative news media outlets, such as The Koori Mail, and that these should be developed to enhance the quality and diversity of media coverage. Media organisations can actively contribute to improving Indigenous health through raising awareness, evidence-based balanced reporting, and development of closer ties with Indigenous health workers.

Multiple External Representations: Bridges or Barriers to Climate Literacy?

Science.gov (United States)

Holzer, M. A.

2012-12-01

The continuous barrage of science related headlines and other media sources warn us of the need to heed the imperative for a science literate society. Climate change, genetics, evolution are a few of the charged and complex scientific topics requiring public understanding of the science to fully grasp the enormous reach of these topics in our daily lives. For instance, our global climate is changing as evidenced by the analysis of Earth observing satellite data, in-situ data, and proxy data records. How we as a global society decide to address the needs associated with a changing climate are contingent upon having a population that understands how the climate system functions, and can therefore make informed decisions on how to mitigate the effects of climate change. Communication in science relies heavily on the use of multiple representations to support the claims presented. However, these multiple representations require spatial and temporal skills to interpret information portrayed in them, and how a person engages with complex text and the multiple representations varies with the level of expertise one has with the content area. For example, a climatologist will likely identify anomalous data more quickly than a novice when presented with a graph of temperature change over time. These representations are used throughout textbooks as well as popular reading materials such as newspapers and magazines without much consideration for how a reader engages with complex text, diagrams, images, and graphs. If the ability to read and interact with scientific text found in popular literature is perceived as a worthy goal of scientific literacy, then it is imperative that readers understand the relationship between multiple representations and the text while interacting with the science literature they are reading. For example, in climate related articles multiple representations not only support the content, but they are part of the content not to be overlooked by a

Magnified Neural Envelope Coding Predicts Deficits in Speech Perception in Noise.

Science.gov (United States)

Millman, Rebecca E; Mattys, Sven L; Gouws, André D; Prendergast, Garreth

2017-08-09

Verbal communication in noisy backgrounds is challenging. Understanding speech in background noise that fluctuates in intensity over time is particularly difficult for hearing-impaired listeners with a sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). The reduction in fast-acting cochlear compression associated with SNHL exaggerates the perceived fluctuations in intensity in amplitude-modulated sounds. SNHL-induced changes in the coding of amplitude-modulated sounds may have a detrimental effect on the ability of SNHL listeners to understand speech in the presence of modulated background noise. To date, direct evidence for a link between magnified envelope coding and deficits in speech identification in modulated noise has been absent. Here, magnetoencephalography was used to quantify the effects of SNHL on phase locking to the temporal envelope of modulated noise (envelope coding) in human auditory cortex. Our results show that SNHL enhances the amplitude of envelope coding in posteromedial auditory cortex, whereas it enhances the fidelity of envelope coding in posteromedial and posterolateral auditory cortex. This dissociation was more evident in the right hemisphere, demonstrating functional lateralization in enhanced envelope coding in SNHL listeners. However, enhanced envelope coding was not perceptually beneficial. Our results also show that both hearing thresholds and, to a lesser extent, magnified cortical envelope coding in left posteromedial auditory cortex predict speech identification in modulated background noise. We propose a framework in which magnified envelope coding in posteromedial auditory cortex disrupts the segregation of speech from background noise, leading to deficits in speech perception in modulated background noise. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT People with hearing loss struggle to follow conversations in noisy environments. Background noise that fluctuates in intensity over time poses a particular challenge. Using magnetoencephalography, we demonstrate

Multiple instance learning tracking method with local sparse representation

KAUST Repository

Xie, Chengjun

2013-10-01

When objects undergo large pose change, illumination variation or partial occlusion, most existed visual tracking algorithms tend to drift away from targets and even fail in tracking them. To address this issue, in this study, the authors propose an online algorithm by combining multiple instance learning (MIL) and local sparse representation for tracking an object in a video system. The key idea in our method is to model the appearance of an object by local sparse codes that can be formed as training data for the MIL framework. First, local image patches of a target object are represented as sparse codes with an overcomplete dictionary, where the adaptive representation can be helpful in overcoming partial occlusion in object tracking. Then MIL learns the sparse codes by a classifier to discriminate the target from the background. Finally, results from the trained classifier are input into a particle filter framework to sequentially estimate the target state over time in visual tracking. In addition, to decrease the visual drift because of the accumulative errors when updating the dictionary and classifier, a two-step object tracking method combining a static MIL classifier with a dynamical MIL classifier is proposed. Experiments on some publicly available benchmarks of video sequences show that our proposed tracker is more robust and effective than others. © The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2013.

On the phase space representations. 1

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Polubarinov, I.V.

1978-01-01

The Dirac representation theory deals usually with the amplitude formalism of the quantum theory. An introduction is given into a theory of some other representations, which are applicable in the density matrix formalism and can naturally be called phase space representations (PSR). They use terms of phase space variables (x and p simultaneously) and give a description, close to the classical phase space description. Definitions and algebraic properties are given in quantum mechanics for such PSRs as the Wigner representation, coherent state representation and others. Completeness relations of a matrix type are used as a starting point. The case of quantum field theory is also outlined

L-type calcium channels refine the neural population code of sound level

Science.gov (United States)

Grimsley, Calum Alex; Green, David Brian

2016-01-01

The coding of sound level by ensembles of neurons improves the accuracy with which listeners identify how loud a sound is. In the auditory system, the rate at which neurons fire in response to changes in sound level is shaped by local networks. Voltage-gated conductances alter local output by regulating neuronal firing, but their role in modulating responses to sound level is unclear. We tested the effects of L-type calcium channels (CaL: CaV1.1–1.4) on sound-level coding in the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus (ICC) in the auditory midbrain. We characterized the contribution of CaL to the total calcium current in brain slices and then examined its effects on rate-level functions (RLFs) in vivo using single-unit recordings in awake mice. CaL is a high-threshold current and comprises ∼50% of the total calcium current in ICC neurons. In vivo, CaL activates at sound levels that evoke high firing rates. In RLFs that increase monotonically with sound level, CaL boosts spike rates at high sound levels and increases the maximum firing rate achieved. In different populations of RLFs that change nonmonotonically with sound level, CaL either suppresses or enhances firing at sound levels that evoke maximum firing. CaL multiplies the gain of monotonic RLFs with dynamic range and divides the gain of nonmonotonic RLFs with the width of the RLF. These results suggest that a single broad class of calcium channels activates enhancing and suppressing local circuits to regulate the sensitivity of neuronal populations to sound level. PMID:27605536

The Coding of Biological Information: From Nucleotide Sequence to Protein Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Štambuk, Nikola

The paper reviews the classic results of Swanson, Dayhoff, Grantham, Blalock and Root-Bernstein, which link genetic code nucleotide patterns to the protein structure, evolution and molecular recognition. Symbolic representation of the binary addresses defining particular nucleotide and amino acid properties is discussed, with consideration of: structure and metric of the code, direct correspondence between amino acid and nucleotide information, and molecular recognition of the interacting protein motifs coded by the complementary DNA and RNA strands.

Social representations of adolescents on sexual relations and the use of condoms

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elys de Oliveira Bezerra

Full Text Available The objective of this investigation was to identify how adolescents structure the social representations of sexual intercourse and use of condoms. Exploratory and descriptive research was conducted with a convenience sample consisting of 234 students of a public secondary school in Fortaleza-CE, Brazil, between July 2009 and April 2010. Data were collected using a questionnaire with variables on socioeconomic status and sexual behaviour, and Free Association test with three terms: 'sex', 'unprotected sex' and 'sex with a condom'. Sexual intercourse was represented by love and affection among the women, while men associated sex to pleasure, desire and attraction toward the female body. The condom was considered important by both groups, but men represented condoms as being something bad that restricts pleasure. Health professionals are granted the opportunity to identify vulnerabilities of this population to DST/HIV/AIDS and work with these vulnerabilities in the most appropriate way.

Relative Contributions of Goal Representation and Kinematic Information to Self-Monitoring by Chimpanzees and Humans

Science.gov (United States)

Kaneko, Takaaki; Tomonaga, Masaki

2012-01-01

It is important to monitor feedback related to the intended result of an action while executing that action. This monitoring process occurs hierarchically; that is, sensorimotor processing occurs at a lower level, and conceptual representation of action goals occurs at a higher level. Although the hierarchical nature of self-monitoring may derive…

CFD codes and the Onsager relations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Makai, M.

2008-01-01

In the last decade, papers appeared in the literature discussing a shortcoming of the basic equations of hydrodynamics: the Navier-Stokes equations do not meet the Onsager symmetry relations. Recently R. Streater wrote about the topic. The basic problem is that the solution to the Boltzmann equation f(r,v,t) depends on seven variable, nevertheless the solution of the Navier-Stokes equation yields T(r,t),v(r,t) and ?(r,t)-the temperature, velocity and density distribution, altogether ?ve functions. Clearly, the solution class of the Boltzmann equation is a broader class than the solution class of the Navier-Stokes equation. What is the importance of that question? Are the results of CFD codes questionable ones or, the contradiction can be resolved by some ignored terms of second order? (Author)

Traditional marriage and family relations of the Albanian population from Kosovo and Metohia in the light of Leka Dukajini Code

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Predojević Jelena R.

2002-01-01

Full Text Available The Leka Dukajini Code (LDC influenced the way of life of Albanian population to a great extent. It represents a set of rules and norms by which they regulated their relations, and it is believed that they still do so presently as well to some extent. Taking into consideration that LDC includes almost all social, economic and moral spheres of life, this paper analyzes the fields which contribute to the familiarization with the conditions in which the Kosovo and Metohia population developed, such as the organization of the patriarchal family, marriage relations, the position of women, inheritance, and similar. The patriarchy with Albanians is still present today, especially in the villages, and here and there in towns, despite the escalated process of urbanization and industrialization. Manifestations of this patriarchal way of life are reflected through the maintenance of the institutions of family clans, whose characteristics are a large number of families, mutual property and production means, mutual production and consumption as well as communal living. A large number of authors believes that in the ethno-psyche of every Albanian there are still roots of will and sympathy towards clans. A clan is governed by its head, and his authority, although established on the interests of the group, presents limited individual freedom for the members of the family because it is expected from them to respect the will of the head of the family. Family clans in the eyes of others represents a secure way of life. Common law arose and developed under cruel life conditions, codified the way of life and in that way neglected individuality yet imposed the group, large families, solidarity and submissiveness to authority. The whole LDC is imbued with religious spirit, which is most obviously expressed with the institution of marriage. It also puts the woman in the worst position, who is not respected as a women, who has no right in decision making, and the more

A fifth equation to model the relative velocity the 3-D thermal-hydraulic code THYC; Une cinquieme equation pour modeliser la vitesse relative dans le code de thermohydraulique THYC

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jouhanique, T.; Rascle, P.

1995-11-01

E.D.F. has developed, since 1986, a general purpose code named THYC (Thermal HYdraulic Code) designed to study three-dimensional single and two-phase flows in rod tube bundles (pressurised water reactor cores, steam generators, condensers, heat exchangers). In these studies, the relative velocity was calculated by a drift-flux correlation. However, the relative velocity between vapor and liquid is an important parameter for the accuracy of a two-phase flow modelling in a three-dimensional code. The range of application of drift-flux correlations is mainly limited by the characteristic of the flow pattern (counter current flow ...) and by large 3-D effects. The purpose of this paper is to describe a numerical scheme which allows the relative velocity to be computed in a general case. Only the methodology is investigated in this paper which is not a validation work. The interfacial drag force is an important factor of stability and accuracy of the results. This force, closely dependent on the flow pattern, is not entirely established yet, so a range of multiplicator of its expression is used to compare the numerical results with the VATICAN test section measurements. (authors). 13 refs., 6 figs.

The Effects of Visual Cues and Learners' Field Dependence in Multiple External Representations Environment for Novice Program Comprehension

Science.gov (United States)

Wei, Liew Tze; Sazilah, Salam

2012-01-01

This study investigated the effects of visual cues in multiple external representations (MER) environment on the learning performance of novices' program comprehension. Program codes and flowchart diagrams were used as dual representations in multimedia environment to deliver lessons on C-Programming. 17 field independent participants and 16 field…

EPRI-LATTICE: a multigroup neutron transport code for light water reactor lattice physics calculations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Jones, D.B.

1986-01-01

EPRI-LATTICE is a multigroup neutron transport computer code for the analysis of light water reactor fuel assemblies. It can solve the two-dimensional neutron transport problem by two distinct methods: (a) the method of collision probabilities and (b) the method of discrete ordinates. The code was developed by S. Levy Inc. as an account of work sponsored by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). The collision probabilities calculation in EPRI-LATTICE (L-CP) is based on the same methodology that exists in the lattice codes CPM-2 and EPRI-CPM. Certain extensions have been made to the data representations of the CPM programs to improve the overall accuracy of the calculation. The important extensions include unique representations of scattering matrices and fission fractions (chi) for each composition in the problem. A new capability specifically developed for the EPRI-LATTICE code is a discrete ordinates methodology. The discrete ordinates calculation in EPRI-LATTICE (L-SN) is based on the discrete S/sub n/ methodology that exists in the TWODANT program. In contrast to TWODANT, which utilizes synthetic diffusion acceleration and supports multiple geometries, only the transport equations are solved by L-SN and only the data representations for the two-dimensional geometry are treated

Throughput, Energy and Overhead of Multicast Device-to-Device Communications with Network Coded Cooperation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hernandez, Nestor; Heide, Janus; Roetter, Daniel Enrique Lucani

2017-01-01

, this assumes that the throughput gains and energy savings in multicasting are much larger between devices than the base station to the receivers. However, current mobile networks suffer from many different issues varying the performance in data rates, which calls into question these assumptions. Therefore......, a first objective of this work is to assess the operating regions where employing cooperation results in higher throughput and/or energy savings. We consider multicast scenarios with network coded mechanisms employing Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC). However, although RLNC is good for low amount...... of transmissions in multicast, it has an inherent overhead from extreme high or low field related caveats. Thus, as a second objective, we review and propose the application of new network codes that posses low overhead for multicasting, by having a short representation and low dependence probability. We provide...

Social representations of female orgasm.

Science.gov (United States)

Lavie-Ajayi, Maya; Joffe, Hélène

2009-01-01

This study examines women's social representations of female orgasm. Fifty semi-structured interviews were conducted with British women. The data were thematically analysed and compared with the content of female orgasm-related writing in two women's magazines over a 30-year period. The results indicate that orgasm is deemed the goal of sex with emphasis on its physiological dimension. However, the women and the magazines graft onto this scientifically driven representation the importance of relational and emotive aspects of orgasm. For the women, particularly those who experience themselves as having problems with orgasm, the scientifically driven representations induce feelings of failure, but are also resisted. The findings highlight the role played by the social context in women's subjective experience of their sexual health.

The representation of order information in auditory-verbal short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Kalm, Kristjan; Norris, Dennis

2014-05-14

Here we investigate how order information is represented in auditory-verbal short-term memory (STM). We used fMRI and a serial recall task to dissociate neural activity patterns representing the phonological properties of the items stored in STM from the patterns representing their order. For this purpose, we analyzed fMRI activity patterns elicited by different item sets and different orderings of those items. These fMRI activity patterns were compared with the predictions made by positional and chaining models of serial order. The positional models encode associations between items and their positions in a sequence, whereas the chaining models encode associations between successive items and retain no position information. We show that a set of brain areas in the postero-dorsal stream of auditory processing store associations between items and order as predicted by a positional model. The chaining model of order representation generates a different pattern similarity prediction, which was shown to be inconsistent with the fMRI data. Our results thus favor a neural model of order representation that stores item codes, position codes, and the mapping between them. This study provides the first fMRI evidence for a specific model of order representation in the human brain. Copyright © 2014 the authors 0270-6474/14/346879-08$15.00/0.

Surface acoustic wave coding for orthogonal frequency coded devices

Science.gov (United States)

Malocha, Donald (Inventor); Kozlovski, Nikolai (Inventor)

2011-01-01

Methods and systems for coding SAW OFC devices to mitigate code collisions in a wireless multi-tag system. Each device producing plural stepped frequencies as an OFC signal with a chip offset delay to increase code diversity. A method for assigning a different OCF to each device includes using a matrix based on the number of OFCs needed and the number chips per code, populating each matrix cell with OFC chip, and assigning the codes from the matrix to the devices. The asynchronous passive multi-tag system includes plural surface acoustic wave devices each producing a different OFC signal having the same number of chips and including a chip offset time delay, an algorithm for assigning OFCs to each device, and a transceiver to transmit an interrogation signal and receive OFC signals in response with minimal code collisions during transmission.

Special functions and the theory of group representations

CERN Document Server

Vilenkin, N Ja

1968-01-01

A standard scheme for a relation between special functions and group representation theory is the following: certain classes of special functions are interpreted as matrix elements of irreducible representations of a certain Lie group, and then properties of special functions are related to (and derived from) simple well-known facts of representation theory. The book combines the majority of known results in this direction. In particular, the author describes connections between the exponential functions and the additive group of real numbers (Fourier analysis), Legendre and Jacobi polynomials and representations of the group SU(2), and the hypergeometric function and representations of the group SL(2,R), as well as many other classes of special functions.

A Model of Representational Spaces in Human Cortex.

Science.gov (United States)

Guntupalli, J Swaroop; Hanke, Michael; Halchenko, Yaroslav O; Connolly, Andrew C; Ramadge, Peter J; Haxby, James V

2016-06-01

Current models of the functional architecture of human cortex emphasize areas that capture coarse-scale features of cortical topography but provide no account for population responses that encode information in fine-scale patterns of activity. Here, we present a linear model of shared representational spaces in human cortex that captures fine-scale distinctions among population responses with response-tuning basis functions that are common across brains and models cortical patterns of neural responses with individual-specific topographic basis functions. We derive a common model space for the whole cortex using a new algorithm, searchlight hyperalignment, and complex, dynamic stimuli that provide a broad sampling of visual, auditory, and social percepts. The model aligns representations across brains in occipital, temporal, parietal, and prefrontal cortices, as shown by between-subject multivariate pattern classification and intersubject correlation of representational geometry, indicating that structural principles for shared neural representations apply across widely divergent domains of information. The model provides a rigorous account for individual variability of well-known coarse-scale topographies, such as retinotopy and category selectivity, and goes further to account for fine-scale patterns that are multiplexed with coarse-scale topographies and carry finer distinctions. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press.

Coupling ontology driven semantic representation with multilingual natural language generation for tuning international terminologies.

Science.gov (United States)

Rassinoux, Anne-Marie; Baud, Robert H; Rodrigues, Jean-Marie; Lovis, Christian; Geissbühler, Antoine

2007-01-01

The importance of clinical communication between providers, consumers and others, as well as the requisite for computer interoperability, strengthens the need for sharing common accepted terminologies. Under the directives of the World Health Organization (WHO), an approach is currently being conducted in Australia to adopt a standardized terminology for medical procedures that is intended to become an international reference. In order to achieve such a standard, a collaborative approach is adopted, in line with the successful experiment conducted for the development of the new French coding system CCAM. Different coding centres are involved in setting up a semantic representation of each term using a formal ontological structure expressed through a logic-based representation language. From this language-independent representation, multilingual natural language generation (NLG) is performed to produce noun phrases in various languages that are further compared for consistency with the original terms. Outcomes are presented for the assessment of the International Classification of Health Interventions (ICHI) and its translation into Portuguese. The initial results clearly emphasize the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of the proposed method for handling both a different classification and an additional language. NLG tools, based on ontology driven semantic representation, facilitate the discovery of ambiguous and inconsistent terms, and, as such, should be promoted for establishing coherent international terminologies.

A searching and reporting system for relational databases using a graph-based metadata representation.

Science.gov (United States)

Hewitt, Robin; Gobbi, Alberto; Lee, Man-Ling

2005-01-01

Relational databases are the current standard for storing and retrieving data in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. However, retrieving data from a relational database requires specialized knowledge of the database schema and of the SQL query language. At Anadys, we have developed an easy-to-use system for searching and reporting data in a relational database to support our drug discovery project teams. This system is fast and flexible and allows users to access all data without having to write SQL queries. This paper presents the hierarchical, graph-based metadata representation and SQL-construction methods that, together, are the basis of this system's capabilities.

Task representation in individual and joint settings

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wolfgang ePrinz

2015-05-01

Full Text Available This paper outlines a framework for task representation and discusses applications to interference tasks in individual and joint settings. The framework is derived from the Theory of Event Coding. This theory regards task sets as transient assemblies of event codes in which stimulus and response codes interact and shape each other in particular ways. On the one hand, stimulus and response codes compete with each other within their respective subsets (horizontal interactions. On the other hand, stimulus and response code cooperate with each other (vertical interactions. Code interactions instantiating competition and cooperation apply to two time scales: on-line performance (i.e., doing the task and off-line implementation (i.e., setting the task. Interference arises when stimulus and response codes overlap in features that are irrelevant for stimulus identification, but relevant for response selection. To resolve this dilemma, the feature profiles of event codes may become restructured in various ways. The framework is applied to three kinds of interference paradigms. Special emphasis is given to joint settings where tasks are shared between two participants. Major conclusions derived from these applications include: (1 Response competition is the chief driver of interference. Likewise, different modes of response competition give rise to different patterns of interference. (2 The type of features in which stimulus and response codes overlap is also a crucial factor. Different types of such features give likewise rise to different patterns of interference. (3 Task sets for joint settings conflate intraindividual conflicts between responses (what, with interindividual conflicts between responding agents (whom. Features of response codes may, therefore, not only address responses, but also responding agents (both physically and socially.

Task representation in individual and joint settings

Science.gov (United States)

Prinz, Wolfgang

2015-01-01

This paper outlines a framework for task representation and discusses applications to interference tasks in individual and joint settings. The framework is derived from the Theory of Event Coding (TEC). This theory regards task sets as transient assemblies of event codes in which stimulus and response codes interact and shape each other in particular ways. On the one hand, stimulus and response codes compete with each other within their respective subsets (horizontal interactions). On the other hand, stimulus and response code cooperate with each other (vertical interactions). Code interactions instantiating competition and cooperation apply to two time scales: on-line performance (i.e., doing the task) and off-line implementation (i.e., setting the task). Interference arises when stimulus and response codes overlap in features that are irrelevant for stimulus identification, but relevant for response selection. To resolve this dilemma, the feature profiles of event codes may become restructured in various ways. The framework is applied to three kinds of interference paradigms. Special emphasis is given to joint settings where tasks are shared between two participants. Major conclusions derived from these applications include: (1) Response competition is the chief driver of interference. Likewise, different modes of response competition give rise to different patterns of interference; (2) The type of features in which stimulus and response codes overlap is also a crucial factor. Different types of such features give likewise rise to different patterns of interference; and (3) Task sets for joint settings conflate intraindividual conflicts between responses (what), with interindividual conflicts between responding agents (whom). Features of response codes may, therefore, not only address responses, but also responding agents (both physically and socially). PMID:26029085

[Development of the 2014 G-DRG system. Departure from coding of secondary diagnoses?].

Science.gov (United States)

Volkmer, B G; Kahlmeyer, A; Petervari, M; Pechoel, M

2014-01-01

The objective of the German DRG (diagnosis-related groups) system is to adequately reimburse hospital costs using flat rate payments. The goal is to thereby achieve the most adequate representation of hospital costs in flat rate payments. The DRG for 2014 is based on the actual number of cases treated and the costs determined from 2012. For 2014, the current changes of the DRG system for the specialty urology concerning the coding and recording of secondary diagnoses are presented and discussed.

Diagnosis-based and external cause-based criteria to identify adverse drug reactions in hospital ICD-coded data: application to an Australia population-based study

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wei Du

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Objectives: External cause International Classification of Diseases (ICD codes are commonly used to ascertain adverse drug reactions (ADRs related to hospitalisation. We quantified ascertainment of ADR-related hospitalisation using external cause codes and additional ICD-based hospital diagnosis codes. Methods: We reviewed the scientific literature to identify different ICD-based criteria for ADR-related hospitalisations, developed algorithms to capture ADRs based on candidate hospital ICD-10 diagnoses and external cause codes (Y40–Y59, and incorporated previously published causality ratings estimating the probability that a specific diagnosis was ADR related. We applied the algorithms to the NSW Admitted Patient Data Collection records of 45 and Up Study participants (2011–2013. Results: Of 493 442 hospitalisations among 267 153 study participants during 2011–2013, 18.8% (n = 92 953 had hospital diagnosis codes that were potentially ADR related; 1.1% (n = 5305 had high/very high–probability ADR-related diagnosis codes (causality ratings: A1 and A2; and 2.0% (n = 10 039 had ADR-related external cause codes. Overall, 2.2% (n = 11 082 of cases were classified as including an ADR-based hospitalisation on either external cause codes or high/very high–probability ADR-related diagnosis codes. Hence, adding high/very high–probability ADR-related hospitalisation codes to standard external cause codes alone (Y40–Y59 increased the number of hospitalisations classified as having an ADR-related diagnosis by 10.4%. Only 6.7% of cases with high-probability ADR-related mental symptoms were captured by external cause codes. Conclusion: Selective use of high-probability ADR-related hospital diagnosis codes in addition to external cause codes yielded a modest increase in hospitalised ADR incidence, which is of potential clinical significance. Clinically validated combinations of diagnosis codes could potentially further enhance capture.

Bilingual processing of ASL-English code-blends: The consequences of accessing two lexical representations simultaneously

OpenAIRE

Emmorey, Karen; Petrich, Jennifer; Gollan, Tamar H.

2012-01-01

Bilinguals who are fluent in American Sign Language (ASL) and English often produce code-blends - simultaneously articulating a sign and a word while conversing with other ASL-English bilinguals. To investigate the cognitive mechanisms underlying code-blend processing, we compared picture-naming times (Experiment 1) and semantic categorization times (Experiment 2) for code-blends versus ASL signs and English words produced alone. In production, code-blending did not slow lexical retrieval for...

The CODE: a revised battery for coping and defense and its relations to subjective health

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Eriksen, H. R.; Olff, M.; Ursin, H.

1997-01-01

A condensed test battery (the CODE) based on the Utrecht Coping List (UCL) and part of the Defense Mechanisms Inventory (DMI) has been developed to assess coping and defense in large population studies. It was tested for reliability and validity in students and back pain patients. Principal

The CODE : A revised battery for coping and defense and its relations to subjective health

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Eriksen, H.R; Olff, M.; Ursin, H

A condensed test battery (the CODE) based on the Utrecht Coping List (UCL) and part of the Defense Mechanisms Inventory (DMI) has been developed to assess coping and defense in large population studies. It was tested for reliability and validity in students and back pain patients. Principal

Illness representations of type 2 diabetes patients are associated with perceptions of diabetes threat in relatives

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Esch, S.C.M.; Nijkamp, M.D.; Cornel, M.C.; Snoek, F.J.

2014-01-01

In the fight against the type 2 diabetes epidemic, patients might be asked to discuss familial susceptibility to type 2 diabetes in their family. Illness representations of patients (N = 546) were assessed to explore their impact on perceived type 2 diabetes threat in relatives. Reporting high type

High efficiency video coding (HEVC) algorithms and architectures

CERN Document Server

Budagavi, Madhukar; Sullivan, Gary

2014-01-01

This book provides developers, engineers, researchers and students with detailed knowledge about the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard. HEVC is the successor to the widely successful H.264/AVC video compression standard, and it provides around twice as much compression as H.264/AVC for the same level of quality. The applications for HEVC will not only cover the space of the well-known current uses and capabilities of digital video – they will also include the deployment of new services and the delivery of enhanced video quality, such as ultra-high-definition television (UHDTV) and video with higher dynamic range, wider range of representable color, and greater representation precision than what is typically found today. HEVC is the next major generation of video coding design – a flexible, reliable and robust solution that will support the next decade of video applications and ease the burden of video on world-wide network traffic. This book provides a detailed explanation of the various parts ...

Representational Classroom Practices that Contribute to Students' Conceptual and Representational Understanding of Chemical Bonding

Science.gov (United States)

Hilton, Annette; Nichols, Kim

2011-11-01

Understanding bonding is fundamental to success in chemistry. A number of alternative conceptions related to chemical bonding have been reported in the literature. Research suggests that many alternative conceptions held by chemistry students result from previous teaching; if teachers are explicit in the use of representations and explain their content-specific forms and functions, this might be avoided. The development of an understanding of and ability to use multiple representations is crucial to students' understanding of chemical bonding. This paper draws on data from a larger study involving two Year 11 chemistry classes (n = 27, n = 22). It explores the contribution of explicit instruction about multiple representations to students' understanding and representation of chemical bonding. The instructional strategies were documented using audio-recordings and the teacher-researcher's reflection journal. Pre-test-post-test comparisons showed an improvement in conceptual understanding and representational competence. Analysis of the students' texts provided further evidence of the students' ability to use multiple representations to explain macroscopic phenomena on the molecular level. The findings suggest that explicit instruction about representational form and function contributes to the enhancement of representational competence and conceptual understanding of bonding in chemistry. However, the scaffolding strategies employed by the teacher play an important role in the learning process. This research has implications for professional development enhancing teachers' approaches to these aspects of instruction around chemical bonding.

Power, privilege and disadvantage: Intersectionality theory and political representation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eline Severs

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This article critically reviews the extant literature on social group representation and clarifies the advantages of intersectionality theory for studying political representation. It argues that the merit of intersectionality theory can be found in its ontology of power. Intersectionality theory is founded on a relational conception of political power that locates the constitution of power relations within social interactions, such as political representation. As such, intersectionality theory pushes scholarship beyond studying representation inequalities —that are linked to presumably stable societal positions— to also consider the ways in which political representation (recreates positions of privilege and disadvantage.

Conformal field theories, representations and lattice constructions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dolan, L.; Montague, P.

1996-01-01

An account is given of the structure and representations of chiral bosonic meromorphic conformal field theories (CFT's), and, in particular, the conditions under which such a CFT may be extended by a representation to form a new theory. This general approach is illustrated by considering the untwisted and Z 2 -twisted theories, H(Λ) and H(Λ) respectively, which may be constructed from a suitable even Euclidean lattice Λ. Similarly, one may construct lattices Λ C and Lambda C by analogous constructions from a doubly-even binary code C. In the case when C is self-dual, the corresponding lattices are also. Similarly, H(Λ) and H(Λ) are self-dual if and only if Λ is. We show that H(Λ C ) has a natural triality structure, which induces an isomorphism H(Λ C )≡H(Λ C ) and also a triality structure on H(Λ C ). For C the Golay code, Λ C is the Leech lattice, and the triality on H(Λ C ) is the symmetry which extends the natural action of (an extension of) Conway's group on this theory to the Monster, so setting triality and Frenkel, Lepowsky and Meurman's construction of the natural Monster module in a more general context. The results also serve to shed some light on the classification of self-dual CFT's. We find that of the 48 theories H(Λ) and H(Λ) with central charge 24 that there are 39 distinct ones, and further that all 9 coincidences are accounted for by the isomorphism detailed above, induced by the existence of a doubly-even self-dual binary code. (orig.). With 8 figs., 2 tabs

Social Representations of Accounting in Facebook Communities

OpenAIRE

Ivan Canan; Isabela Augusta Andrade Souza; Kelly Cristina Pereira de Oliveira

2017-01-01

This paper deals with the social representations of accounting that emerge from the contents shared by users of the social network Facebook. The sample studied includes the ten most popular communities organized around accounting, and their last fifty posts. The messages were coded and categorized using the content analysis methodology as well as platform social interaction data such as likes, comments and shares were used to assess the popularity of content / contexts and message formats. Th...

Vision and the representation of the surroundings in spatial memory

Science.gov (United States)

Tatler, Benjamin W.; Land, Michael F.

2011-01-01

One of the paradoxes of vision is that the world as it appears to us and the image on the retina at any moment are not much like each other. The visual world seems to be extensive and continuous across time. However, the manner in which we sample the visual environment is neither extensive nor continuous. How does the brain reconcile these differences? Here, we consider existing evidence from both static and dynamic viewing paradigms together with the logical requirements of any representational scheme that would be able to support active behaviour. While static scene viewing paradigms favour extensive, but perhaps abstracted, memory representations, dynamic settings suggest sparser and task-selective representation. We suggest that in dynamic settings where movement within extended environments is required to complete a task, the combination of visual input, egocentric and allocentric representations work together to allow efficient behaviour. The egocentric model serves as a coding scheme in which actions can be planned, but also offers a potential means of providing the perceptual stability that we experience. PMID:21242146

Vision and the representation of the surroundings in spatial memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Tatler, Benjamin W; Land, Michael F

2011-02-27

One of the paradoxes of vision is that the world as it appears to us and the image on the retina at any moment are not much like each other. The visual world seems to be extensive and continuous across time. However, the manner in which we sample the visual environment is neither extensive nor continuous. How does the brain reconcile these differences? Here, we consider existing evidence from both static and dynamic viewing paradigms together with the logical requirements of any representational scheme that would be able to support active behaviour. While static scene viewing paradigms favour extensive, but perhaps abstracted, memory representations, dynamic settings suggest sparser and task-selective representation. We suggest that in dynamic settings where movement within extended environments is required to complete a task, the combination of visual input, egocentric and allocentric representations work together to allow efficient behaviour. The egocentric model serves as a coding scheme in which actions can be planned, but also offers a potential means of providing the perceptual stability that we experience.

Note related to the elaboration of a coding by key sentences for the programming of a document automatic selection system; Notice relative a l'elaboration d'un codage par phrases cles pour la programmation d'un systeme De selection automatique des documents

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Leroy, A. [Commissariat a l' energie atomique et aux energies alternatives - CEA, Service de Documentation (France); Braffort, P. [Commissariat a l' energie atomique et aux energies alternatives - CEA, Departement d' Electronique (France)

1959-07-01

This note deals with the providing of CEA documentalists with a tool for coding studies. The authors first discuss issues related to code selection criteria (author classification, topic classification, and so on), and propose an overview and a discussion of linguistic models. They also comment how diagrams illustrating relationships between words are built up, and propose a diagram representation example which includes different concepts such as conditions, properties, object, tools or processes (for example hardness for a steel, batch processing for a condition, or sintering for a process), and also the introduction of negation. Then, the authors address how basic concepts can be highlighted, describe how key sentences can be built up, and propose an example analysis in the case of a published article dealing with nuclear reactors (in this case, the study of a liquid-metal neutron absorber for the control of a gas-cooled power reactor). Perspectives of evolution are finally discussed.

Biases in detection of apparent “weekend effect” on outcome with administrative coding data: population based study of stroke

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Linxin

2016-01-01

Objectives To determine the accuracy of coding of admissions for stroke on weekdays versus weekends and any impact on apparent outcome. Design Prospective population based stroke incidence study and a scoping review of previous studies of weekend effects in stroke. Setting Primary and secondary care of all individuals registered with nine general practices in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom (OXVASC, the Oxford Vascular Study). Participants All patients with clinically confirmed acute stroke in OXVASC identified with multiple overlapping methods of ascertainment in 2002-14 versus all acute stroke admissions identified by hospital diagnostic and mortality coding alone during the same period. Main outcomes measures Accuracy of administrative coding data for all patients with confirmed stroke admitted to hospital in OXVASC. Difference between rates of “false positive” or “false negative” coding for weekday and weekend admissions. Impact of inaccurate coding on apparent case fatality at 30 days in weekday versus weekend admissions. Weekend effects on outcomes in patients with confirmed stroke admitted to hospital in OXVASC and impacts of other potential biases compared with those in the scoping review. Results Among 92 728 study population, 2373 episodes of acute stroke were ascertained in OXVASC, of which 826 (34.8%) mainly minor events were managed without hospital admission, 60 (2.5%) occurred out of the area or abroad, and 195 (8.2%) occurred in hospital during an admission for a different reason. Of 1292 local hospital admissions for acute stroke, 973 (75.3%) were correctly identified by administrative coding. There was no bias in distribution of weekend versus weekday admission of the 319 strokes missed by coding. Of 1693 admissions for stroke identified by coding, 1055 (62.3%) were confirmed to be acute strokes after case adjudication. Among the 638 false positive coded cases, patients were more likely to be admitted on weekdays than at weekends (536

Transfer of ERR for radiation-related leukemia from Japanese population to Chinese population

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Huang Liqiong; Sun Zhijuan; Zhao Yongcheng; Wang Jixian

2011-01-01

Objective: To establish a transfer model for excess relative risk (ERR) for radiation-related leukemia from Japanese population to Chinese population. Methods: Combined ERR of several subtypes of leukemia published in 1994, with the corresponding leukemia baseline incidence rates obtained from Cancer Incidence in Five Continents Vol. Ⅸ (CI5-Ⅸ) for Japanese population and Chinese population, a weighted risk transfer model was employed between an additive model and a multiplicative model, to execute ERR transfer. Results: A range of weighing factors was proposed for risk transfer models: weighing factor was 0.4 for male and 0.3 for female, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, acute myeloid leukemia and chronic myeloid leukemia. The uncertainty for ERR transfer was characterized by lognormal distribution. Conclusions: Based on the difference of baseline incidence rate for subtypes of leukemia between Japanese population and Chinese population, the transfer model and these weighing factors discussed in the present study could be applicable to transfer ERR for radiation-related leukemia from Japanese population to Chinese population. (authors)

White Racism/Black Signs: Censorship and Images of Race Relations.

Science.gov (United States)

Patton, Cindy

1995-01-01

Discusses the simultaneous establishment of legal rights to censor film and proscriptions on particular racial representations. Describes several changes in the Hays Code that demonstrate a change in the censor's theory of the image. Suggests that these changes substituted the censorship of race-related images with a new prohibition on racial…

Sensorimotor Representations in Cerebellar Granule Cells in Larval Zebrafish Are Dense, Spatially Organized, and Non-temporally Patterned.

Science.gov (United States)

Knogler, Laura D; Markov, Daniil A; Dragomir, Elena I; Štih, Vilim; Portugues, Ruben

2017-05-08

A fundamental question in neurobiology is how animals integrate external sensory information from their environment with self-generated motor and sensory signals in order to guide motor behavior and adaptation. The cerebellum is a vertebrate hindbrain region where all of these signals converge and that has been implicated in the acquisition, coordination, and calibration of motor activity. Theories of cerebellar function postulate that granule cells encode a variety of sensorimotor signals in the cerebellar input layer. These models suggest that representations should be high-dimensional, sparse, and temporally patterned. However, in vivo physiological recordings addressing these points have been limited and in particular have been unable to measure the spatiotemporal dynamics of population-wide activity. In this study, we use both calcium imaging and electrophysiology in the awake larval zebrafish to investigate how cerebellar granule cells encode three types of sensory stimuli as well as stimulus-evoked motor behaviors. We find that a large fraction of all granule cells are active in response to these stimuli, such that representations are not sparse at the population level. We find instead that most responses belong to only one of a small number of distinct activity profiles, which are temporally homogeneous and anatomically clustered. We furthermore identify granule cells that are active during swimming behaviors and others that are multimodal for sensory and motor variables. When we pharmacologically change the threshold of a stimulus-evoked behavior, we observe correlated changes in these representations. Finally, electrophysiological data show no evidence for temporal patterning in the coding of different stimulus durations. Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Low-Rank Sparse Coding for Image Classification

KAUST Repository

Zhang, Tianzhu; Ghanem, Bernard; Liu, Si; Xu, Changsheng; Ahuja, Narendra

2013-01-01

In this paper, we propose a low-rank sparse coding (LRSC) method that exploits local structure information among features in an image for the purpose of image-level classification. LRSC represents densely sampled SIFT descriptors, in a spatial neighborhood, collectively as low-rank, sparse linear combinations of code words. As such, it casts the feature coding problem as a low-rank matrix learning problem, which is different from previous methods that encode features independently. This LRSC has a number of attractive properties. (1) It encourages sparsity in feature codes, locality in codebook construction, and low-rankness for spatial consistency. (2) LRSC encodes local features jointly by considering their low-rank structure information, and is computationally attractive. We evaluate the LRSC by comparing its performance on a set of challenging benchmarks with that of 7 popular coding and other state-of-the-art methods. Our experiments show that by representing local features jointly, LRSC not only outperforms the state-of-the-art in classification accuracy but also improves the time complexity of methods that use a similar sparse linear representation model for feature coding.

Low-Rank Sparse Coding for Image Classification

KAUST Repository

Zhang, Tianzhu

2013-12-01

In this paper, we propose a low-rank sparse coding (LRSC) method that exploits local structure information among features in an image for the purpose of image-level classification. LRSC represents densely sampled SIFT descriptors, in a spatial neighborhood, collectively as low-rank, sparse linear combinations of code words. As such, it casts the feature coding problem as a low-rank matrix learning problem, which is different from previous methods that encode features independently. This LRSC has a number of attractive properties. (1) It encourages sparsity in feature codes, locality in codebook construction, and low-rankness for spatial consistency. (2) LRSC encodes local features jointly by considering their low-rank structure information, and is computationally attractive. We evaluate the LRSC by comparing its performance on a set of challenging benchmarks with that of 7 popular coding and other state-of-the-art methods. Our experiments show that by representing local features jointly, LRSC not only outperforms the state-of-the-art in classification accuracy but also improves the time complexity of methods that use a similar sparse linear representation model for feature coding.

Penal Code (Ordinance No. 12 of 1983), 1 July 1984.

Science.gov (United States)

1987-01-01

This document contains provisions of the 1984 Penal Code of Montserrat relating to sexual offenses, abortion, offenses relating to marriage, homicide and other offenses against the person, and neglect endangering life or health. Part 8 of the Code holds that a man found guilty of raping a woman is liable to life imprisonment. Rape is deemed to involve unlawful (extramarital) sexual intercourse with a woman without her consent (this is determined if the rape involved force, threats, administration of drugs, or false representation). The Code also defines offenses in cases of incest, child abuse, prostitution, abduction, controlling the actions and finances of a prostitute, and having unlawful sexual intercourse with a mentally defective woman. Part 9 of the Code outlaws abortion unless it is conducted in an approved establishment after two medical practitioners have determined that continuing the pregnancy would risk the life or physical/mental health of the pregnant woman or if a substantial risk exists that the child would have serious abnormalities. Part 10 outlaws bigamy, and part 12 holds that infanticide performed by a mother suffering postpartum imbalances can be prosecuted as manslaughter. This part also outlaws concealment of the body of a newborn, whether that child died before, at, or after birth, and aggravated assault on any child not more than 14 years old. Part 12 makes it an offense to subject any child to neglect endangering its life or health.

User manual for version 4.3 of the Tripoli-4 Monte-Carlo method particle transport computer code

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Both, J.P.; Mazzolo, A.; Peneliau, Y.; Petit, O.; Roesslinger, B.

2003-01-01

This manual relates to Version 4.3 TRIPOLI-4 code. TRIPOLI-4 is a computer code simulating the transport of neutrons, photons, electrons and positrons. It can be used for radiation shielding calculations (long-distance propagation with flux attenuation in non-multiplying media) and neutronic calculations (fissile medium, criticality or sub-criticality basis). This makes it possible to calculate k eff (for criticality), flux, currents, reaction rates and multi-group cross-sections. TRIPOLI-4 is a three-dimensional code that uses the Monte-Carlo method. It allows for point-wise description in terms of energy of cross-sections and multi-group homogenized cross-sections and features two modes of geometrical representation: surface and combinatorial. The code uses cross-section libraries in ENDF/B format (such as JEF2-2, ENDF/B-VI and JENDL) for point-wise description cross-sections in APOTRIM format (from the APOLLO2 code) or a format specific to TRIPOLI-4 for multi-group description. (authors)

Inner Radiation Belt Representation of the Energetic Electron Environment: Model and Data Synthesis Using the Salammbo Radiation Belt Transport Code and Los Alamos Geosynchronous and GPS Energetic Particle Data

Science.gov (United States)

Friedel, R. H. W.; Bourdarie, S.; Fennell, J.; Kanekal, S.; Cayton, T. E.

2004-01-01

The highly energetic electron environment in the inner magnetosphere (GEO inward) has received a lot of research attention in resent years, as the dynamics of relativistic electron acceleration and transport are not yet fully understood. These electrons can cause deep dielectric charging in any space hardware in the MEO to GEO region. We use a new and novel approach to obtain a global representation of the inner magnetospheric energetic electron environment, which can reproduce the absolute environment (flux) for any spacecraft orbit in that region to within a factor of 2 for the energy range of 100 KeV to 5 MeV electrons, for any levels of magnetospheric activity. We combine the extensive set of inner magnetospheric energetic electron observations available at Los Alamos with the physics based Salammbo transport code, using the data assimilation technique of "nudging". This in effect input in-situ data into the code and allows the diffusion mechanisms in the code to interpolate the data into regions and times of no data availability. We present here details of the methods used, both in the data assimilation process and in the necessary inter-calibration of the input data used. We will present sample runs of the model/data code and compare the results to test spacecraft data not used in the data assimilation process.

Second-order statistics of colour codes modulate transformations that effectuate varying degrees of scene invariance and illumination invariance.

Science.gov (United States)

Mausfeld, Rainer; Andres, Johannes

2002-01-01

We argue, from an ethology-inspired perspective, that the internal concepts 'surface colours' and 'illumination colours' are part of the data format of two different representational primitives. Thus, the internal concept of 'colour' is not a unitary one but rather refers to two different types of 'data structure', each with its own proprietary types of parameters and relations. The relation of these representational structures is modulated by a class of parameterised transformations whose effects are mirrored in the idealised computational achievements of illumination invariance of colour codes, on the one hand, and scene invariance, on the other hand. Because the same characteristics of a light array reaching the eye can be physically produced in many different ways, the visual system, then, has to make an 'inference' whether a chromatic deviation of the space-averaged colour codes from the neutral point is due to a 'non-normal', ie chromatic, illumination or due to an imbalanced spectral reflectance composition. We provide evidence that the visual system uses second-order statistics of chromatic codes of a single view of a scene in order to modulate corresponding transformations. In our experiments we used centre surround configurations with inhomogeneous surrounds given by a random structure of overlapping circles, referred to as Seurat configurations. Each family of surrounds has a fixed space-average of colour codes, but differs with respect to the covariance matrix of colour codes of pixels that defines the chromatic variance along some chromatic axis and the covariance between luminance and chromatic channels. We found that dominant wavelengths of red-green equilibrium settings of the infield exhibited a stable and strong dependence on the chromatic variance of the surround. High variances resulted in a tendency towards 'scene invariance', low variances in a tendency towards 'illumination invariance' of the infield.

Dual-Coding Theory and Connectionist Lexical Selection

OpenAIRE

Wang, Ye-Yi

1994-01-01

We introduce the bilingual dual-coding theory as a model for bilingual mental representation. Based on this model, lexical selection neural networks are implemented for a connectionist transfer project in machine translation. This lexical selection approach has two advantages. First, it is learnable. Little human effort on knowledge engineering is required. Secondly, it is psycholinguistically well-founded.

Testing the accuracy and stability of spectral methods in numerical relativity

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Boyle, Michael; Lindblom, Lee; Pfeiffer, Harald P.; Scheel, Mark A.; Kidder, Lawrence E.

2007-01-01

The accuracy and stability of the Caltech-Cornell pseudospectral code is evaluated using the Kidder, Scheel, and Teukolsky (KST) representation of the Einstein evolution equations. The basic 'Mexico City tests' widely adopted by the numerical relativity community are adapted here for codes based on spectral methods. Exponential convergence of the spectral code is established, apparently limited only by numerical roundoff error or by truncation error in the time integration. A general expression for the growth of errors due to finite machine precision is derived, and it is shown that this limit is achieved here for the linear plane-wave test

Disjointness of Stabilizer Codes and Limitations on Fault-Tolerant Logical Gates

Science.gov (United States)

Jochym-O'Connor, Tomas; Kubica, Aleksander; Yoder, Theodore J.

2018-04-01

Stabilizer codes are among the most successful quantum error-correcting codes, yet they have important limitations on their ability to fault tolerantly compute. Here, we introduce a new quantity, the disjointness of the stabilizer code, which, roughly speaking, is the number of mostly nonoverlapping representations of any given nontrivial logical Pauli operator. The notion of disjointness proves useful in limiting transversal gates on any error-detecting stabilizer code to a finite level of the Clifford hierarchy. For code families, we can similarly restrict logical operators implemented by constant-depth circuits. For instance, we show that it is impossible, with a constant-depth but possibly geometrically nonlocal circuit, to implement a logical non-Clifford gate on the standard two-dimensional surface code.

Regional Atmospheric Transport Code for Hanford Emission Tracking (RATCHET)

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ramsdell, J.V. Jr.; Simonen, C.A.; Burk, K.W.

1994-02-01

The purpose of the Hanford Environmental Dose Reconstruction (HEDR) Project is to estimate radiation doses that individuals may have received from operations at the Hanford Site since 1944. This report deals specifically with the atmospheric transport model, Regional Atmospheric Transport Code for Hanford Emission Tracking (RATCHET). RATCHET is a major rework of the MESOILT2 model used in the first phase of the HEDR Project; only the bookkeeping framework escaped major changes. Changes to the code include (1) significant changes in the representation of atmospheric processes and (2) incorporation of Monte Carlo methods for representing uncertainty in input data, model parameters, and coefficients. To a large extent, the revisions to the model are based on recommendations of a peer working group that met in March 1991. Technical bases for other portions of the atmospheric transport model are addressed in two other documents. This report has three major sections: a description of the model, a user's guide, and a programmer's guide. These sections discuss RATCHET from three different perspectives. The first provides a technical description of the code with emphasis on details such as the representation of the model domain, the data required by the model, and the equations used to make the model calculations. The technical description is followed by a user's guide to the model with emphasis on running the code. The user's guide contains information about the model input and output. The third section is a programmer's guide to the code. It discusses the hardware and software required to run the code. The programmer's guide also discusses program structure and each of the program elements

Transformations and representations supporting spatial perspective taking

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Alfred B.; Zacks, Jeffrey M.

2018-01-01

Spatial perspective taking is the ability to reason about spatial relations relative to another’s viewpoint. Here, we propose a mechanistic hypothesis that relates mental representations of one’s viewpoint to the transformations used for spatial perspective taking. We test this hypothesis using a novel behavioral paradigm that assays patterns of response time and variation in those patterns across people. The results support the hypothesis that people maintain a schematic representation of the space around their body, update that representation to take another’s perspective, and thereby to reason about the space around their body. This is a powerful computational mechanism that can support imitation, coordination of behavior, and observational learning. PMID:29545731

The Spatial Politics of Spatial Representation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Olesen, Kristian; Richardson, Tim

2011-01-01

spatial planning in Denmark reveals how fuzzy spatial representations and relational spatial concepts are being used to depoliticise strategic spatial planning processes and to camouflage spatial politics. The paper concludes that, while relational geography might play an important role in building......This paper explores the interplay between the spatial politics of new governance landscapes and innovations in the use of spatial representations in planning. The central premise is that planning experiments with new relational approaches become enmeshed in spatial politics. The case of strategic...

Spatial language processing in the blind: evidence for a supramodal representation and cortical reorganization.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marijn E Struiksma

Full Text Available Neuropsychological and imaging studies have shown that the left supramarginal gyrus (SMG is specifically involved in processing spatial terms (e.g. above, left of, which locate places and objects in the world. The current fMRI study focused on the nature and specificity of representing spatial language in the left SMG by combining behavioral and neuronal activation data in blind and sighted individuals. Data from the blind provide an elegant way to test the supramodal representation hypothesis, i.e. abstract codes representing spatial relations yielding no activation differences between blind and sighted. Indeed, the left SMG was activated during spatial language processing in both blind and sighted individuals implying a supramodal representation of spatial and other dimensional relations which does not require visual experience to develop. However, in the absence of vision functional reorganization of the visual cortex is known to take place. An important consideration with respect to our finding is the amount of functional reorganization during language processing in our blind participants. Therefore, the participants also performed a verb generation task. We observed that only in the blind occipital areas were activated during covert language generation. Additionally, in the first task there was functional reorganization observed for processing language with a high linguistic load. As the visual cortex was not specifically active for spatial contents in the first task, and no reorganization was observed in the SMG, the latter finding further supports the notion that the left SMG is the main node for a supramodal representation of verbal spatial relations.

Event-related potentials reveal the relations between feature representations at different levels of abstraction.

Science.gov (United States)

Hannah, Samuel D; Shedden, Judith M; Brooks, Lee R; Grundy, John G

2016-11-01

In this paper, we use behavioural methods and event-related potentials (ERPs) to explore the relations between informational and instantiated features, as well as the relation between feature abstraction and rule type. Participants are trained to categorize two species of fictitious animals and then identify perceptually novel exemplars. Critically, two groups are given a perfectly predictive counting rule that, according to Hannah and Brooks (2009. Featuring familiarity: How a familiar feature instantiation influences categorization. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology/Revue Canadienne de Psychologie Expérimentale, 63, 263-275. Retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1037/a0017919), should orient them to using abstract informational features when categorizing the novel transfer items. A third group is taught a feature list rule, which should orient them to using detailed instantiated features. One counting-rule group were taught their rule before any exposure to the actual stimuli, and the other immediately after training, having learned the instantiations first. The feature-list group were also taught their rule after training. The ERP results suggest that at test, the two counting-rule groups processed items differently, despite their identical rule. This not only supports the distinction that informational and instantiated features are qualitatively different feature representations, but also implies that rules can readily operate over concrete inputs, in contradiction to traditional approaches that assume that rules necessarily act on abstract inputs.

Visualizing code and coverage changes for code review

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Oosterwaal, Sebastiaan; van Deursen, A.; De Souza Coelho, R.; Sawant, A.A.; Bacchelli, A.

2016-01-01

One of the tasks of reviewers is to verify that code modifications are well tested. However, current tools offer little support in understanding precisely how changes to the code relate to changes to the tests. In particular, it is hard to see whether (modified) test code covers the changed code.

Climate Change-Related Water Disasters' Impact on Population Health.

Science.gov (United States)

Veenema, Tener Goodwin; Thornton, Clifton P; Lavin, Roberta Proffitt; Bender, Annah K; Seal, Stella; Corley, Andrew

2017-11-01

middle-/high-income countries (62%), despite the fact that low-income countries bear a disproportionate share of the burden on morbidity and mortality from CCRWDs. Empirical evidence related to CCRWDs is predominately descriptive in nature, characterizing the cascade of climatic shifts leading to major environmental disruption and exposure to toxins, and their resultant morbidity and mortality. There is inadequate representation of research exploring potentially modifiable factors associated with CCRWDs and their impact on population health. This review lays the foundation for a wide array of further areas of analysis to explore the negative health impacts of CCRWDs and for nurses to take a leadership role in identifying and advocating for evidence-based policies to plan, prevent, or mitigate these effects. Nurses comprise the largest global healthcare workforce and are in a position to advocate for disaster preparedness for CCRWDs, develop more robust environmental health policies, and work towards mitigating exposure to environmental toxins that may threaten human health. © 2017 Sigma Theta Tau International.

Extracting the Behaviorally Relevant Stimulus: Unique Neural Representation of Farnesol, a Component of the Recruitment Pheromone of Bombus terrestris.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Martin F Strube-Bloss

Full Text Available To trigger innate behavior, sensory neural networks are pre-tuned to extract biologically relevant stimuli. Many male-female or insect-plant interactions depend on this phenomenon. Especially communication among individuals within social groups depends on innate behaviors. One example is the efficient recruitment of nest mates by successful bumblebee foragers. Returning foragers release a recruitment pheromone in the nest while they perform a 'dance' behavior to activate unemployed nest mates. A major component of this pheromone is the sesquiterpenoid farnesol. How farnesol is processed and perceived by the olfactory system, has not yet been identified. It is much likely that processing farnesol involves an innate mechanism for the extraction of relevant information to trigger a fast and reliable behavioral response. To test this hypothesis, we used population response analyses of 100 antennal lobe (AL neurons recorded in alive bumblebee workers under repeated stimulation with four behaviorally different, but chemically related odorants (geraniol, citronellol, citronellal and farnesol. The analysis identified a unique neural representation of the recruitment pheromone component compared to the other odorants that are predominantly emitted by flowers. The farnesol induced population activity in the AL allowed a reliable separation of farnesol from all other chemically related odor stimuli we tested. We conclude that the farnesol induced population activity may reflect a predetermined representation within the AL-neural network allowing efficient and fast extraction of a behaviorally relevant stimulus. Furthermore, the results show that population response analyses of multiple single AL-units may provide a powerful tool to identify distinct representations of behaviorally relevant odors.

Multi-channel EEG-based sleep stage classification with joint collaborative representation and multiple kernel learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Shi, Jun; Liu, Xiao; Li, Yan; Zhang, Qi; Li, Yingjie; Ying, Shihui

2015-10-30

Electroencephalography (EEG) based sleep staging is commonly used in clinical routine. Feature extraction and representation plays a crucial role in EEG-based automatic classification of sleep stages. Sparse representation (SR) is a state-of-the-art unsupervised feature learning method suitable for EEG feature representation. Collaborative representation (CR) is an effective data coding method used as a classifier. Here we use CR as a data representation method to learn features from the EEG signal. A joint collaboration model is established to develop a multi-view learning algorithm, and generate joint CR (JCR) codes to fuse and represent multi-channel EEG signals. A two-stage multi-view learning-based sleep staging framework is then constructed, in which JCR and joint sparse representation (JSR) algorithms first fuse and learning the feature representation from multi-channel EEG signals, respectively. Multi-view JCR and JSR features are then integrated and sleep stages recognized by a multiple kernel extreme learning machine (MK-ELM) algorithm with grid search. The proposed two-stage multi-view learning algorithm achieves superior performance for sleep staging. With a K-means clustering based dictionary, the mean classification accuracy, sensitivity and specificity are 81.10 ± 0.15%, 71.42 ± 0.66% and 94.57 ± 0.07%, respectively; while with the dictionary learned using the submodular optimization method, they are 80.29 ± 0.22%, 71.26 ± 0.78% and 94.38 ± 0.10%, respectively. The two-stage multi-view learning based sleep staging framework outperforms all other classification methods compared in this work, while JCR is superior to JSR. The proposed multi-view learning framework has the potential for sleep staging based on multi-channel or multi-modality polysomnography signals. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Social Representations of Accounting in Facebook Communities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ivan Canan

2017-12-01

Full Text Available This paper deals with the social representations of accounting that emerge from the contents shared by users of the social network Facebook. The sample studied includes the ten most popular communities organized around accounting, and their last fifty posts. The messages were coded and categorized using the content analysis methodology as well as platform social interaction data such as likes, comments and shares were used to assess the popularity of content / contexts and message formats. The analysis of the data indicates that the people that congregate around accounting in Facebook communities tend to deal primarily with tributary and bureaucratic issues, suggesting that in these communities accounting is the expression of a praxis whose function is to attend totax issues. Deductions converge to other studies on social representations of accounting in Brazil, reinforcing the idea that accounting is viewed differently by academia, professionals and stakeholders.

Journal Afrika Statistika ISSN 0852-0305 Asymptotic representation ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Asymptotic representation theorems for poverty indices ... Statistical asymptotic laws for these indices, particularly asymptotic normality, on which statistical inference on the ... population of individuals, each of which having a random income or ...

Preschoolers’ Self-Regulation Moderates Relations between Mothers’ Representations and Children’s Adjustment to School

Science.gov (United States)

Sher-Censor, Efrat; Khafi, Tamar Y.; Yates, Tuppett M.

2016-01-01

Consistent with models of environmental sensitivity (Pluess, 2015), research suggests that the effects of parents’ behaviors on child adjustment are stronger among children who struggle to regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors compared to children with better self-regulation. This study extended prior research by assessing maternal representations of the child, which presumably underlie mothers’ parenting behaviors, to evaluate the moderating influence of preschoolers’ self-regulation on relations between mothers’ representations and changes in children’s negative and positive developmental adjustment outcomes from preschool to first grade. Participants were 187 mothers and their preschoolers. Mothers’ representations were assessed via the coherence of their verbal narratives regarding their preschooler and teachers reported on preschoolers’ self-regulation. In preschool and first grade, examiners rated children’s externalizing behavior problems and ego-resilience, and teachers rated children’s externalizing behavior problems and peer acceptance. Consistent with the environmental sensitivity framework, the coherence of mothers’ narratives predicted changes in adjustment among children with self-regulation difficulties, but not among children with better self-regulation. Preschoolers with self-regulation difficulties whose mothers produced incoherent narratives showed increased externalizing behavior problems, decreased ego-resilience and lower peer acceptance across the transition to school. In contrast, preschoolers with better self-regulation did not evidence such effects when their mothers produced incoherent narratives. The implications of these findings for understanding and supporting children’s adjustment during the early school years are discussed. PMID:27598254

Numerical Magnitude Representations Influence Arithmetic Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Booth, Julie L.; Siegler, Robert S.

2008-01-01

This study examined whether the quality of first graders' (mean age = 7.2 years) numerical magnitude representations is correlated with, predictive of, and causally related to their arithmetic learning. The children's pretest numerical magnitude representations were found to be correlated with their pretest arithmetic knowledge and to be…

Integral Representations of the Catalan Numbers and Their Applications

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Feng Qi

2017-08-01

Full Text Available In the paper, the authors survey integral representations of the Catalan numbers and the Catalan–Qi function, discuss equivalent relations between these integral representations, supply alternative and new proofs of several integral representations, collect applications of some integral representations, and present sums of several power series whose coefficients involve the Catalan numbers.

L-functions and the oscillator representation

CERN Document Server

Rallis, Stephen

1987-01-01

These notes are concerned with showing the relation between L-functions of classical groups (*F1 in particular) and *F2 functions arising from the oscillator representation of the dual reductive pair *F1 *F3 O(Q). The problem of measuring the nonvanishing of a *F2 correspondence by computing the Petersson inner product of a *F2 lift from *F1 to O(Q) is considered. This product can be expressed as the special value of an L-function (associated to the standard representation of the L-group of *F1) times a finite number of local Euler factors (measuring whether a given local representation occurs in a given oscillator representation). The key ideas used in proving this are (i) new Rankin integral representations of standard L-functions, (ii) see-saw dual reductive pairs and (iii) Siegel-Weil formula. The book addresses readers who specialize in the theory of automorphic forms and L-functions and the representation theory of Lie groups. N

[The effect of goal framing on the activation of affective representations].

Science.gov (United States)

Takehashi, Hiroki; Karasawa, Kaori

2007-10-01

Guided by regulatory focus theory, this study examined the effects of goal framing on the subjective experience of affect and the accessibility of affective representations. Study I examined lay persons' beliefs concerning the relationship between goal framing and certain kinds of affective experiences. The results indicated that a promotion focus was associated with happiness and disappointment, whereas a prevention focus was associated with relaxation and tension. Study 2 examined the effect of goal framing on the activation of affective representations, and found that a promotion focus activated both gain-related representations (happy and disappointment) and loss-related representations (relaxation and tension), whereas a prevention focus activated only loss-related representations. These results suggest that goal framing activates particular affective representations, and the activated affective representations may influence the interpretation of positive or negative experiences. The discussion considered the function of the activation of affective representations as a mediator between goal framing and its cognitive and behavioral consequences.

On the representation of electron multiple elastic-scattering distributions for Monte Carlo calculations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kawrakow, I.; Bielajew, A.F.

1998-01-01

A new representation of elastic electron-nucleus (Coulomb) multiple-scattering distributions is developed. Using the screened Rutherford cross section with the Moliere screening parameter as an example, a simple analytic angular transformation of the Goudsmit-Saunderson multiple-scattering distribution accounts for most of the structure of the angular distribution leaving a residual 3-parameter (path-length, transformed angle and screening parameter) function that is reasonably slowly varying and suitable for rapid, accurate interpolation in a computer-intensive algorithm. The residual function is calculated numerically for a wide range of Moliere screening parameters and path-lengths suitable for use in a general-purpose condensed-history Monte Carlo code. Additionally, techniques are developed that allow the distributions to be scaled to account for energy loss. This new representation allows ''''on-the-fly'''' sampling of Goudsmit-Saunderson angular distributions in a screened Rutherford approximation suitable for class II condensed-history Monte Carlo codes. (orig.)

Assessment of codes, by-laws and regulations relating to air wells in building design

Science.gov (United States)

Fadzil, Sharifah Fairuz Syed; Karamazaman, Nazli

2017-10-01

Codes and by-laws concerning air well design (for buildings and lavatories) in Malaysia has been established in the Malaysian Uniform Building By-Laws UBBL number 40 (1) and (2) since the 1980s. Wells are there to fulfill the ventilation and daylighting requirements. The minimum well area according to building storey height are compared between UBBL and the Singapore's well requirements from the Building Construction Authority BCA. A visual and graphical representation (with schematics building and well diagrams drawn to scale) of the minimum well sizes and dimensions is given. It can be seen that if the minimum requirement of well size is used for buildings above 8 storeys high, a thin well resulted which is not proportionate to the building height. A proposed dimension is graphed and given to be used in the UBBL which translated to graphics (3 dimensional buildings drawn to scale) created a much better well proportion.

Comparison of Bit Error Rate of Line Codes in NG-PON2

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomas Horvath

2016-05-01

Full Text Available This article focuses on simulation and comparison of line codes NRZ (Non Return to Zero, RZ (Return to Zero and Miller’s code for NG-PON2 (Next-Generation Passive Optical Network Stage 2 using. Our article provides solutions with Q-factor, BER (Bit Error Rate, and bandwidth comparison. Line codes are the most important part of communication over the optical fibre. The main role of these codes is digital signal representation. NG-PON2 networks use optical fibres for communication that is the reason why OptSim v5.2 is used for simulation.

Court representation in Russia before 1917 (historical aspect

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Konstantin V. Ilyashenko

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Objective basing on the research and analysis of the legislation historical legal sources and other materials to study the process of formation and development of the institution of legal representation in Russia before 1917. Methods the theoretical basis of research is the works of Russian scientists on various aspects of formation development and functioning of the institution of legal representation in Russia from ancient times till 1917. The methodological basis of the research is general scientific methods historical formallogical system and general logical methods analysis synthesis induction and deduction synthesis analogy abstraction. Historicallegal formallegal logicallegal comparative legal methods were applied in the study. The author used the retrospective approach to the study of the issues of legal representation in Russia. Results basing on analysis of normative legal acts regulating relations in the sphere of judicial representation and various doctrinal sources the author has examined the process of the formation and development of the legal representation institution in Russia before 1917 raised the question of providing legal assistance in prerevolutionary Russia. An analogy is drawn between the prerevolutionary legal regulation of the legal representation institution and the modern legislation regulating this legal institution. The conclusion is made about the inadequacy of prerevolutionary legislation regulating relations in the sphere of judicial representation as well as the modern legal regulation of relations in this sphere. It is established that the judicial reform of 1864 improved regulation in this sphere but still did not solve all the problems in this area. The relevance of the study is due to the topicality and the constitutional importance of legal representation for the entire Russian society the need to examine the origins of this legal phenomenon as well as the fact that the institution of legal representation

Klein Topological Field Theories from Group Representations

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Sergey A. Loktev

2011-07-01

Full Text Available We show that any complex (respectively real representation of finite group naturally generates a open-closed (respectively Klein topological field theory over complex numbers. We relate the 1-point correlator for the projective plane in this theory with the Frobenius-Schur indicator on the representation. We relate any complex simple Klein TFT to a real division ring.

The Representation of Female Characters by Women Directors in Surveillance Spaces in Turkish Cinema

OpenAIRE

Berceste Gülçin Özdemir

2017-01-01

The representation of women characters in cinema has been discussed for centuries. In cinema where dominant narrative codes prevail and scopophilic views exist over women characters, passive stereotypes of women are observed in the representation of women characters. In films shot from a woman’s point of view in Turkish Cinema and even in the films outside the main stream in which the stories of women characters are told, the fact that women characters are discussed on the basis of feminist f...

Edge-preserving Intra Depth Coding based on Context-coding and H.264/AVC

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zamarin, Marco; Salmistraro, Matteo; Forchhammer, Søren

2013-01-01

Depth map coding plays a crucial role in 3D Video communication systems based on the “Multi-view Video plus Depth” representation as view synthesis performance is strongly affected by the accuracy of depth information, especially at edges in the depth map image. In this paper an efficient algorithm...... for edge-preserving intra depth compression based on H.264/AVC is presented. The proposed method introduces a new Intra mode specifically targeted to depth macroblocks with arbitrarily shaped edges, which are typically not efficiently represented by DCT. Edge macroblocks are partitioned into two regions...... each approximated by a flat surface. Edge information is encoded by means of contextcoding with an adaptive template. As a novel element, the proposed method allows exploiting the edge structure of previously encoded edge macroblocks during the context-coding step to further increase compression...

Theory Ain't Practice: Four Novice Researchers Navigate Dilemmas of Representation within Immigrant Populations

Science.gov (United States)

Aleixo, Marina; Hansen, Sarah; Horii, Sachiko; Un, Silvy

2014-01-01

This article illuminates instances in which four graduate students have struggled with issues of representation--of themselves and of immigrant participants--at their research sites and in their writing. These dilemmas are situated within the literature on the politics of representation in qualitative research. Although these dilemmas are not…

Tracing Growth of Teachers' Classroom Interactions with Representations of Functions in the Connected Classroom

Science.gov (United States)

Morton, Brian Lee

The purpose of this study is to create an empirically based theoretic model of change of the use and treatment of representations of functions with the use of Connected Classroom Technology (CCT) using data previously collected for the Classroom Connectivity in Promoting Mathematics and Science Achievement (CCMS) project. Qualitative analysis of videotapes of three algebra teachers' instruction focused on different categories thought to influence teaching representations with technology: representations, discourse, technology, and decisions. Models for rating teachers low, medium, or high for each of these categories were created using a priori codes and grounded methodology. A cross case analysis was conducted after the completion of the case studies by comparing and contrasting the three cases. Data revealed that teachers' decisions shifted to incorporate the difference in student ideas/representations made visible by the CCT into their instruction and ultimately altered their orientation to mathematics teaching. The shift in orientation seemed to lead to the teachers' growth with regards to representations, discourse, and technology.

Status Report on Hydrogen Management and Related Computer Codes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Liang, Z.; Chan, C.K.; Sonnenkalb, M.; Bentaib, A.; Malet, J.; Sangiorgi, M.; Gryffroy, D.; Gyepi-Garbrah, S.; Duspiva, J.; Sevon, T.; Kelm, S.; Reinecke, E.A.; Xu, Z.J.; Cervone, A.; Utsuno, H.; Hotta, A.; Hong, S.W.; Kim, J.T.; Visser, D.C.; Stempniewicz, M.M.; Kuriene, L.; Prusinski, P.; Martin-Valdepenas, J.M.; Frid, W.; Isaksson, P.; Dreier, J.; Paladino, D.; Algama, D.; Notafrancesco, A.; Amri, A.; Kissane, M.; )

2014-01-01

In follow-up to the Fukushima Daiichi NPP accident, the Committee on the Safety of Nuclear Installations (CSNI) decided to launch several high priority activities. At the 14. plenary meeting of the Working Group on Analysis and Management of Accidents (WGAMA), a proposal for a status paper on hydrogen generation, transport and mitigation under severe accident conditions was approved. The proposed activity is in line with the WGAMA mandate and it was considered to be needed to revisit the hydrogen issue. The report is broken down into five Chapters and two appendixes. Chapter 1 provides background information for this activity and expected topics defined by the WGAMA members. A general understanding of hydrogen behavior and control in severe accidents is discussed. A brief literature review is included in this chapter to summarize the progress obtained from the early US NRC sponsored research on hydrogen and recent international OECD or EC sponsored projects on hydrogen related topics (generation, distribution, combustion and mitigation). Chapter 2 provides a general overview of the various reactor designs of Western PWRs, BWRs, Eastern European VVERs and PHWRs (CANDUs). The purpose is to understand the containment design features in relation to hydrogen management measures. Chapter 3 provides a detailed description of national requirements on hydrogen management and hydrogen mitigation measures inside the containment and other places (e.g., annulus space, secondary buildings, spent fuel pool, etc.). Discussions are followed on hydrogen analysis approaches, application of safety systems (e.g., spray, containment ventilation, local air cooler, suppression pool, and latch systems), hydrogen measurement strategies as well as lessons learnt from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power accident. Chapter 4 provides an overview of various codes that are being used for hydrogen risk assessment, and the codes capabilities and validation status in terms of hydrogen related

Hyperspectral Image Classification Based on the Combination of Spatial-spectral Feature and Sparse Representation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

YANG Zhaoxia

2015-07-01

Full Text Available In order to avoid the problem of being over-dependent on high-dimensional spectral feature in the traditional hyperspectral image classification, a novel approach based on the combination of spatial-spectral feature and sparse representation is proposed in this paper. Firstly, we extract the spatial-spectral feature by reorganizing the local image patch with the first d principal components(PCs into a vector representation, followed by a sorting scheme to make the vector invariant to local image rotation. Secondly, we learn the dictionary through a supervised method, and use it to code the features from test samples afterwards. Finally, we embed the resulting sparse feature coding into the support vector machine(SVM for hyperspectral image classification. Experiments using three hyperspectral data show that the proposed method can effectively improve the classification accuracy comparing with traditional classification methods.

Student Teachers' Knowledge about Chemical Representations

Science.gov (United States)

Taskin, Vahide; Bernholt, Sascha; Parchmann, Ilka

2017-01-01

Chemical representations serve as a communication tool not only in exchanges between scientists but also in chemistry lessons. The goals of the present study were to measure the extent of student teachers' knowledge about chemical representations, focusing on chemical formulae and structures in particular, and to explore which factors related to…

Contributions of Sensory Coding and Attentional Control to Individual Differences in Performance in Spatial Auditory Selective Attention Tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Dai, Lengshi; Shinn-Cunningham, Barbara G

2016-01-01

Listeners with normal hearing thresholds (NHTs) differ in their ability to steer attention to whatever sound source is important. This ability depends on top-down executive control, which modulates the sensory representation of sound in the cortex. Yet, this sensory representation also depends on the coding fidelity of the peripheral auditory system. Both of these factors may thus contribute to the individual differences in performance. We designed a selective auditory attention paradigm in which we could simultaneously measure envelope following responses (EFRs, reflecting peripheral coding), onset event-related potentials (ERPs) from the scalp (reflecting cortical responses to sound) and behavioral scores. We performed two experiments that varied stimulus conditions to alter the degree to which performance might be limited due to fine stimulus details vs. due to control of attentional focus. Consistent with past work, in both experiments we find that attention strongly modulates cortical ERPs. Importantly, in Experiment I, where coding fidelity limits the task, individual behavioral performance correlates with subcortical coding strength (derived by computing how the EFR is degraded for fully masked tones compared to partially masked tones); however, in this experiment, the effects of attention on cortical ERPs were unrelated to individual subject performance. In contrast, in Experiment II, where sensory cues for segregation are robust (and thus less of a limiting factor on task performance), inter-subject behavioral differences correlate with subcortical coding strength. In addition, after factoring out the influence of subcortical coding strength, behavioral differences are also correlated with the strength of attentional modulation of ERPs. These results support the hypothesis that behavioral abilities amongst listeners with NHTs can arise due to both subcortical coding differences and differences in attentional control, depending on stimulus characteristics

Contributions of sensory coding and attentional control to individual differences in performance in spatial auditory selective attention tasks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lengshi Dai

2016-10-01

Full Text Available Listeners with normal hearing thresholds differ in their ability to steer attention to whatever sound source is important. This ability depends on top-down executive control, which modulates the sensory representation of sound in cortex. Yet, this sensory representation also depends on the coding fidelity of the peripheral auditory system. Both of these factors may thus contribute to the individual differences in performance. We designed a selective auditory attention paradigm in which we could simultaneously measure envelope following responses (EFRs, reflecting peripheral coding, onset event-related potentials from the scalp (ERPs, reflecting cortical responses to sound, and behavioral scores. We performed two experiments that varied stimulus conditions to alter the degree to which performance might be limited due to fine stimulus details vs. due to control of attentional focus. Consistent with past work, in both experiments we find that attention strongly modulates cortical ERPs. Importantly, in Experiment I, where coding fidelity limits the task, individual behavioral performance correlates with subcortical coding strength (derived by computing how the EFR is degraded for fully masked tones compared to partially masked tones; however, in this experiment, the effects of attention on cortical ERPs were unrelated to individual subject performance. In contrast, in Experiment II, where sensory cues for segregation are robust (and thus less of a limiting factor on task performance, inter-subject behavioral differences correlate with subcortical coding strength. In addition, after factoring out the influence of subcortical coding strength, behavioral differences are also correlated with the strength of attentional modulation of ERPs. These results support the hypothesis that behavioral abilities amongst listeners with normal hearing thresholds can arise due to both subcortical coding differences and differences in attentional control, depending on

Reconstructing dynamic mental models of facial expressions in prosopagnosia reveals distinct representations for identity and expression.

Science.gov (United States)

Richoz, Anne-Raphaëlle; Jack, Rachael E; Garrod, Oliver G B; Schyns, Philippe G; Caldara, Roberto

2015-04-01

The human face transmits a wealth of signals that readily provide crucial information for social interactions, such as facial identity and emotional expression. Yet, a fundamental question remains unresolved: does the face information for identity and emotional expression categorization tap into common or distinct representational systems? To address this question we tested PS, a pure case of acquired prosopagnosia with bilateral occipitotemporal lesions anatomically sparing the regions that are assumed to contribute to facial expression (de)coding (i.e., the amygdala, the insula and the posterior superior temporal sulcus--pSTS). We previously demonstrated that PS does not use information from the eye region to identify faces, but relies on the suboptimal mouth region. PS's abnormal information use for identity, coupled with her neural dissociation, provides a unique opportunity to probe the existence of a dichotomy in the face representational system. To reconstruct the mental models of the six basic facial expressions of emotion in PS and age-matched healthy observers, we used a novel reverse correlation technique tracking information use on dynamic faces. PS was comparable to controls, using all facial features to (de)code facial expressions with the exception of fear. PS's normal (de)coding of dynamic facial expressions suggests that the face system relies either on distinct representational systems for identity and expression, or dissociable cortical pathways to access them. Interestingly, PS showed a selective impairment for categorizing many static facial expressions, which could be accounted for by her lesion in the right inferior occipital gyrus. PS's advantage for dynamic facial expressions might instead relate to a functionally distinct and sufficient cortical pathway directly connecting the early visual cortex to the spared pSTS. Altogether, our data provide critical insights on the healthy and impaired face systems, question evidence of deficits

Teenagers with type 2 diabetes mellitus as a hidden population: A qualitative study of the representations and experiences related to the disease in Mazatlán, Mexico

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nathaly Llanes-Díaz

2018-03-01

Full Text Available Objective: To analyze the representations that adolescents with type 2 diabetes mellitus living in Mazatlán, Mexico have of the disease. Methods: The study design was qualitative and based on an analytical approach of narrative research. Indepth interviews and participant observation were conducted with eight adolescents (four females and four males. The sample was theoretical-intentional according to age (10-19 years, diagnosis of type 2 diabetes mellitus, and residence in Mazatlán. Results and Discussion: Adolescent experiences and representations regarding the disease were associated with six themes: 1 knowledge of the disease; 2 self-care practices; 3 identity construction; 4 significance of the disease; 5 family support; and 6 gender as a transversal category. Social stigma that is associated with diabetes and its management leading to self-management barriers, the abandonment of treatment and hiding the disease make adolescents with diabetes to be a hidden population. Identity construction is strongly affected by the disease; indeed, diabetes implied a reconstruction of male identity, while for females the disease was associated with overweight that affects their self-esteem. All of the adolescents lived in a constant dichotomy between present and future, with the fear of dying or getting worse. The absence of intergenerational communication and family support within the adolescents’ families limited adolescent care practices, exacerbating their emotional distress and living the disease with the feeling of loneliness. Conclusions: Our study showed that adolescents affected by type 2 diabetes mellitus, did not experience nor they did face the disease homogeneously but accordingly to the gender and level of family support, which, therefore, should be specifically considered by care programs and health professionals to encourage adherence to treatment, taking into account the emotional well-being and psychological needs of adolescents.

Genetic diversity of the HLA-G coding region in Amerindian populations from the Brazilian Amazon: a possible role of natural selection.

Science.gov (United States)

Mendes-Junior, C T; Castelli, E C; Meyer, D; Simões, A L; Donadi, E A

2013-12-01

HLA-G has an important role in the modulation of the maternal immune system during pregnancy, and evidence that balancing selection acts in the promoter and 3'UTR regions has been previously reported. To determine whether selection acts on the HLA-G coding region in the Amazon Rainforest, exons 2, 3 and 4 were analyzed in a sample of 142 Amerindians from nine villages of five isolated tribes that inhabit the Central Amazon. Six previously described single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified and the Expectation-Maximization (EM) and PHASE algorithms were used to computationally reconstruct SNP haplotypes (HLA-G alleles). A new HLA-G allele, which originated in Amerindian populations by a crossing-over event between two widespread HLA-G alleles, was identified in 18 individuals. Neutrality tests evidenced that natural selection has a complex part in the HLA-G coding region. Although balancing selection is the type of selection that shapes variability at a local level (Native American populations), we have also shown that purifying selection may occur on a worldwide scale. Moreover, the balancing selection does not seem to act on the coding region as strongly as it acts on the flanking regulatory regions, and such coding signature may actually reflect a hitchhiking effect.

Cohen-Macaulay representations

CERN Document Server

Leuschke, Graham J

2012-01-01

This book is a comprehensive treatment of the representation theory of maximal Cohen-Macaulay (MCM) modules over local rings. This topic is at the intersection of commutative algebra, singularity theory, and representations of groups and algebras. Two introductory chapters treat the Krull-Remak-Schmidt Theorem on uniqueness of direct-sum decompositions and its failure for modules over local rings. Chapters 3-10 study the central problem of classifying the rings with only finitely many indecomposable MCM modules up to isomorphism, i.e., rings of finite CM type. The fundamental material--ADE/simple singularities, the double branched cover, Auslander-Reiten theory, and the Brauer-Thrall conjectures--is covered clearly and completely. Much of the content has never before appeared in book form. Examples include the representation theory of Artinian pairs and Burban-Drozd's related construction in dimension two, an introduction to the McKay correspondence from the point of view of maximal Cohen-Macaulay modules, Au...

Evidence for similar patterns of neural activity elicited by picture- and word-based representations of natural scenes.

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Manoj; Federmeier, Kara D; Fei-Fei, Li; Beck, Diane M

2017-07-15

A long-standing core question in cognitive science is whether different modalities and representation types (pictures, words, sounds, etc.) access a common store of semantic information. Although different input types have been shown to activate a shared network of brain regions, this does not necessitate that there is a common representation, as the neurons in these regions could still differentially process the different modalities. However, multi-voxel pattern analysis can be used to assess whether, e.g., pictures and words evoke a similar pattern of activity, such that the patterns that separate categories in one modality transfer to the other. Prior work using this method has found support for a common code, but has two limitations: they have either only examined disparate categories (e.g. animals vs. tools) that are known to activate different brain regions, raising the possibility that the pattern separation and inferred similarity reflects only large scale differences between the categories or they have been limited to individual object representations. By using natural scene categories, we not only extend the current literature on cross-modal representations beyond objects, but also, because natural scene categories activate a common set of brain regions, we identify a more fine-grained (i.e. higher spatial resolution) common representation. Specifically, we studied picture- and word-based representations of natural scene stimuli from four different categories: beaches, cities, highways, and mountains. Participants passively viewed blocks of either phrases (e.g. "sandy beach") describing scenes or photographs from those same scene categories. To determine whether the phrases and pictures evoke a common code, we asked whether a classifier trained on one stimulus type (e.g. phrase stimuli) would transfer (i.e. cross-decode) to the other stimulus type (e.g. picture stimuli). The analysis revealed cross-decoding in the occipitotemporal, posterior parietal and

O2-GIDNC: Beyond instantly decodable network coding

KAUST Repository

Aboutorab, Neda

2013-06-01

In this paper, we are concerned with extending the graph representation of generalized instantly decodable network coding (GIDNC) to a more general opportunistic network coding (ONC) scenario, referred to as order-2 GIDNC (O2-GIDNC). In the O2-GIDNC scheme, receivers can store non-instantly decodable packets (NIDPs) comprising two of their missing packets, and use them in a systematic way for later decodings. Once this graph representation is found, it can be used to extend the GIDNC graph-based analyses to the proposed O2-GIDNC scheme with a limited increase in complexity. In the proposed O2-GIDNC scheme, the information of the stored NIDPs at the receivers and the decoding opportunities they create can be exploited to improve the broadcast completion time and decoding delay compared to traditional GIDNC scheme. The completion time and decoding delay minimizing algorithms that can operate on the new O2-GIDNC graph are further described. The simulation results show that our proposed O2-GIDNC improves the completion time and decoding delay performance of the traditional GIDNC. © 2013 IEEE.

Defining a methodology for benchmarking spectrum unfolding codes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Meyer, W.; Kirmser, P.G.; Miller, W.H.; Hu, K.K.

1976-01-01

It has long been recognized that different neutron spectrum unfolding codes will produce significantly different results when unfolding the same measured data. In reviewing the results of such analyses it has been difficult to determine which result if any is the best representation of what was measured by the spectrometer detector. A proposal to develop a benchmarking procedure for spectrum unfolding codes is presented. The objective of the procedure will be to begin to develop a methodology and a set of data with a well established and documented result that could be used to benchmark and standardize the various unfolding methods and codes. It is further recognized that development of such a benchmark must involve a consensus of the technical community interested in neutron spectrum unfolding

Graphics processing units accelerated semiclassical initial value representation molecular dynamics

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Tamascelli, Dario; Dambrosio, Francesco Saverio [Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Celoria 16, 20133 Milano (Italy); Conte, Riccardo [Department of Chemistry and Cherry L. Emerson Center for Scientific Computation, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322 (United States); Ceotto, Michele, E-mail: michele.ceotto@unimi.it [Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Milano, via Golgi 19, 20133 Milano (Italy)

2014-05-07

This paper presents a Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) implementation of the Semiclassical Initial Value Representation (SC-IVR) propagator for vibrational molecular spectroscopy calculations. The time-averaging formulation of the SC-IVR for power spectrum calculations is employed. Details about the GPU implementation of the semiclassical code are provided. Four molecules with an increasing number of atoms are considered and the GPU-calculated vibrational frequencies perfectly match the benchmark values. The computational time scaling of two GPUs (NVIDIA Tesla C2075 and Kepler K20), respectively, versus two CPUs (Intel Core i5 and Intel Xeon E5-2687W) and the critical issues related to the GPU implementation are discussed. The resulting reduction in computational time and power consumption is significant and semiclassical GPU calculations are shown to be environment friendly.

Tripartite Governance: Enabling Successful Implementations with Vulnerable Populations.

Science.gov (United States)

Kennedy, Margaret Ann

2016-01-01

Vulnerable populations are often at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to the implementation of health information systems in an equitable, appropriate, and timely manner. The disadvantages experienced by vulnerable populations are innumerable and include lack of representation, lack of appropriate levels of funding, lack of resources and capacity, and lack of representation. Increasingly, models of representation for complex implementations involve a tripartite project governance model. This tripartite partnership distributes accountability across all partners, and ensures that vulnerable populations have an equitable contribution to the direction of implementation according to their needs. This article shares lessons learned and best practices from complex tripartite partnerships supporting implementations with vulnerable populations in Canada.

An Axiomatic Representation of System Dynamics

CERN Document Server

Baianu, I

2004-01-01

An axiomatic representation of system dynamics is introduced in terms of categories, functors, organismal supercategories, limits and colimits of diagrams. Specific examples are considered in Complex Systems Biology, such as ribosome biogenesis and Hormonal Control in human subjects. "Fuzzy" Relational Structures are also proposed for flexible representations of biological system dynamics and organization.

Representations of race relations in the classroom: the black in the everyday school life

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Wilma de Nazaré Baía Coelho

2015-11-01

Full Text Available This paper presents some preliminaries results of a research that investigates the representations about race, color, Difference, Prejudgment and Racial Discrimination of the school’s agents teachers, employees and students on the quotidian of the History’s, Portuguese’s and Art’s classes of the first two year of the secondary education of a Belém-PA’s private school, in order to understand the place of the black people in the school pedagogic practices, regarding the obligation of touching racial subjects as established by the low 10.639/2003. Using the methodological and theoretic approach of Pierre Bourdieu and Roger Chartier, we analyzed the representations obtained by the non-participative observation in those classes. We realized that teachers almost didn’t know anything about the low 10.639/2003 and about the ethnic and racial question on Brazil, what brings as result the reproduction of racial prejudgment and discrimination by the students. Our analysis aims, from understanding the problems with teacher development, to understand the problems related to the ethnic and racial question at school and propose solutions.

The Evolution of Spatial Representation During Complex Visual Data Analysis: Knowing When and How to be Exact

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Schunn, Christian D; Saner, Lelyn D; Trafton, J. G; Trickett, Susan B; Kirschenbaum, Susan K; Knepp, Michael; Shoup, Melanie

2005-01-01

... (weather forecasting, submarine target motion analysis, and fMRI data analysis). Internal spatial representations are coded from spontaneous gestures made during cued-recall summaries of problem solving activities...

Neural Elements for Predictive Coding

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stewart SHIPP

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Predictive coding theories of sensory brain function interpret the hierarchical construction of the cerebral cortex as a Bayesian, generative model capable of predicting the sensory data consistent with any given percept. Predictions are fed backwards in the hierarchy and reciprocated by prediction error in the forward direction, acting to modify the representation of the outside world at increasing levels of abstraction, and so to optimize the nature of perception over a series of iterations. This accounts for many ‘illusory’ instances of perception where what is seen (heard, etc is unduly influenced by what is expected, based on past experience. This simple conception, the hierarchical exchange of prediction and prediction error, confronts a rich cortical microcircuitry that is yet to be fully documented. This article presents the view that, in the current state of theory and practice, it is profitable to begin a two-way exchange: that predictive coding theory can support an understanding of cortical microcircuit function, and prompt particular aspects of future investigation, whilst existing knowledge of microcircuitry can, in return, influence theoretical development. As an example, a neural inference arising from the earliest formulations of predictive coding is that the source populations of forwards and backwards pathways should be completely separate, given their functional distinction; this aspect of circuitry – that neurons with extrinsically bifurcating axons do not project in both directions – has only recently been confirmed. Here, the computational architecture prescribed by a generalized (free-energy formulation of predictive coding is combined with the classic ‘canonical microcircuit’ and the laminar architecture of hierarchical extrinsic connectivity to produce a template schematic, that is further examined in the light of (a updates in the microcircuitry of primate visual cortex, and (b rapid technical advances made

Neural Elements for Predictive Coding.

Science.gov (United States)

Shipp, Stewart

2016-01-01

Predictive coding theories of sensory brain function interpret the hierarchical construction of the cerebral cortex as a Bayesian, generative model capable of predicting the sensory data consistent with any given percept. Predictions are fed backward in the hierarchy and reciprocated by prediction error in the forward direction, acting to modify the representation of the outside world at increasing levels of abstraction, and so to optimize the nature of perception over a series of iterations. This accounts for many 'illusory' instances of perception where what is seen (heard, etc.) is unduly influenced by what is expected, based on past experience. This simple conception, the hierarchical exchange of prediction and prediction error, confronts a rich cortical microcircuitry that is yet to be fully documented. This article presents the view that, in the current state of theory and practice, it is profitable to begin a two-way exchange: that predictive coding theory can support an understanding of cortical microcircuit function, and prompt particular aspects of future investigation, whilst existing knowledge of microcircuitry can, in return, influence theoretical development. As an example, a neural inference arising from the earliest formulations of predictive coding is that the source populations of forward and backward pathways should be completely separate, given their functional distinction; this aspect of circuitry - that neurons with extrinsically bifurcating axons do not project in both directions - has only recently been confirmed. Here, the computational architecture prescribed by a generalized (free-energy) formulation of predictive coding is combined with the classic 'canonical microcircuit' and the laminar architecture of hierarchical extrinsic connectivity to produce a template schematic, that is further examined in the light of (a) updates in the microcircuitry of primate visual cortex, and (b) rapid technical advances made possible by transgenic neural

Methods for Ensuring High Quality of Coding of Cause of Death. The Mortality Register to Follow Southern Urals Populations Exposed to Radiation.

Science.gov (United States)

Startsev, N; Dimov, P; Grosche, B; Tretyakov, F; Schüz, J; Akleyev, A

2015-01-01

To follow up populations exposed to several radiation accidents in the Southern Urals, a cause-of-death registry was established at the Urals Center capturing deaths in the Chelyabinsk, Kurgan and Sverdlovsk region since 1950. When registering deaths over such a long time period, quality measures need to be in place to maintain quality and reduce the impact of individual coders as well as quality changes in death certificates. To ensure the uniformity of coding, a method for semi-automatic coding was developed, which is described here. Briefly, the method is based on a dynamic thesaurus, database-supported coding and parallel coding by two different individuals. A comparison of the proposed method for organizing the coding process with the common procedure of coding showed good agreement, with, at the end of the coding process, 70  - 90% agreement for the three-digit ICD -9 rubrics. The semi-automatic method ensures a sufficiently high quality of coding by at the same time providing an opportunity to reduce the labor intensity inherent in the creation of large-volume cause-of-death registries.

Spatial Pyramid Covariance based Compact Video Code for Robust Face Retrieval in TV-series.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Yan; Wang, Ruiping; Cui, Zhen; Shan, Shiguang; Chen, Xilin

2016-10-10

We address the problem of face video retrieval in TV-series which searches video clips based on the presence of specific character, given one face track of his/her. This is tremendously challenging because on one hand, faces in TV-series are captured in largely uncontrolled conditions with complex appearance variations, and on the other hand retrieval task typically needs efficient representation with low time and space complexity. To handle this problem, we propose a compact and discriminative representation for the huge body of video data, named Compact Video Code (CVC). Our method first models the face track by its sample (i.e., frame) covariance matrix to capture the video data variations in a statistical manner. To incorporate discriminative information and obtain more compact video signature suitable for retrieval, the high-dimensional covariance representation is further encoded as a much lower-dimensional binary vector, which finally yields the proposed CVC. Specifically, each bit of the code, i.e., each dimension of the binary vector, is produced via supervised learning in a max margin framework, which aims to make a balance between the discriminability and stability of the code. Besides, we further extend the descriptive granularity of covariance matrix from traditional pixel-level to more general patchlevel, and proceed to propose a novel hierarchical video representation named Spatial Pyramid Covariance (SPC) along with a fast calculation method. Face retrieval experiments on two challenging TV-series video databases, i.e., the Big Bang Theory and Prison Break, demonstrate the competitiveness of the proposed CVC over state-of-the-art retrieval methods. In addition, as a general video matching algorithm, CVC is also evaluated in traditional video face recognition task on a standard Internet database, i.e., YouTube Celebrities, showing its quite promising performance by using an extremely compact code with only 128 bits.

Indigenous participation and representation in Venezuelan electoral processes

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Luis Fernando ANGOSTO FERRÁNDEZ

2012-06-01

Full Text Available This article examines the Venezuelan regional elections of 2008 as a contextual event for the analysis of electoral strategies and results associated with the indigenous representation. Three factors intertwined in the electoral moment are analyzed: 1. the existence of minimum guaranteed representation for indigenous population in legislative organs; 2. the participation of indigenous candidates and electors; 3. the maneuvers of political parties and civil organizations that attempt to channel and/or benefit from such indigenous representation and participation. The description of the electoral context facilitates the identification of factors that, beyond the normative structure of the State, condition the agency of individuals and parties involved in electoral processes. Among those factors are the symbolic value of indigeneity in the current process of national identity re-definition, the interest of political parties in controlling the vote of the indigenous representation and the tendency towards the consolidation of professionalized elites within the indigenous activism.

Independent Representation of Parts and the Relations between Them: Evidence from Integrative Agnosia

Science.gov (United States)

Behrmann, Marlene; Peterson, Mary A.; Moscovitch, Morris; Suzuki, Satoru

2006-01-01

Whether objects are represented as a collection of parts whose relations are coded independently remains a topic of ongoing discussion among theorists in the domain of shape perception. S. M., an individual with integrative agnosia, and neurologically intact ("normal") individuals learned initially to identify 4 target objects constructed of 2…

Spatially variant morphological restoration and skeleton representation.

Science.gov (United States)

Bouaynaya, Nidhal; Charif-Chefchaouni, Mohammed; Schonfeld, Dan

2006-11-01

The theory of spatially variant (SV) mathematical morphology is used to extend and analyze two important image processing applications: morphological image restoration and skeleton representation of binary images. For morphological image restoration, we propose the SV alternating sequential filters and SV median filters. We establish the relation of SV median filters to the basic SV morphological operators (i.e., SV erosions and SV dilations). For skeleton representation, we present a general framework for the SV morphological skeleton representation of binary images. We study the properties of the SV morphological skeleton representation and derive conditions for its invertibility. We also develop an algorithm for the implementation of the SV morphological skeleton representation of binary images. The latter algorithm is based on the optimal construction of the SV structuring element mapping designed to minimize the cardinality of the SV morphological skeleton representation. Experimental results show the dramatic improvement in the performance of the SV morphological restoration and SV morphological skeleton representation algorithms in comparison to their translation-invariant counterparts.

Population-wide distributions of neural activity during perceptual decision-making

Science.gov (United States)

Machens, Christian

2018-01-01

Cortical activity involves large populations of neurons, even when it is limited to functionally coherent areas. Electrophysiological recordings, on the other hand, involve comparatively small neural ensembles, even when modern-day techniques are used. Here we review results which have started to fill the gap between these two scales of inquiry, by shedding light on the statistical distributions of activity in large populations of cells. We put our main focus on data recorded in awake animals that perform simple decision-making tasks and consider statistical distributions of activity throughout cortex, across sensory, associative, and motor areas. We transversally review the complexity of these distributions, from distributions of firing rates and metrics of spike-train structure, through distributions of tuning to stimuli or actions and of choice signals, and finally the dynamical evolution of neural population activity and the distributions of (pairwise) neural interactions. This approach reveals shared patterns of statistical organization across cortex, including: (i) long-tailed distributions of activity, where quasi-silence seems to be the rule for a majority of neurons; that are barely distinguishable between spontaneous and active states; (ii) distributions of tuning parameters for sensory (and motor) variables, which show an extensive extrapolation and fragmentation of their representations in the periphery; and (iii) population-wide dynamics that reveal rotations of internal representations over time, whose traces can be found both in stimulus-driven and internally generated activity. We discuss how these insights are leading us away from the notion of discrete classes of cells, and are acting as powerful constraints on theories and models of cortical organization and population coding. PMID:23123501

SiNC: Saliency-injected neural codes for representation and efficient retrieval of medical radiographs.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jamil Ahmad

Full Text Available Medical image collections contain a wealth of information which can assist radiologists and medical experts in diagnosis and disease detection for making well-informed decisions. However, this objective can only be realized if efficient access is provided to semantically relevant cases from the ever-growing medical image repositories. In this paper, we present an efficient method for representing medical images by incorporating visual saliency and deep features obtained from a fine-tuned convolutional neural network (CNN pre-trained on natural images. Saliency detector is employed to automatically identify regions of interest like tumors, fractures, and calcified spots in images prior to feature extraction. Neuronal activation features termed as neural codes from different CNN layers are comprehensively studied to identify most appropriate features for representing radiographs. This study revealed that neural codes from the last fully connected layer of the fine-tuned CNN are found to be the most suitable for representing medical images. The neural codes extracted from the entire image and salient part of the image are fused to obtain the saliency-injected neural codes (SiNC descriptor which is used for indexing and retrieval. Finally, locality sensitive hashing techniques are applied on the SiNC descriptor to acquire short binary codes for allowing efficient retrieval in large scale image collections. Comprehensive experimental evaluations on the radiology images dataset reveal that the proposed framework achieves high retrieval accuracy and efficiency for scalable image retrieval applications and compares favorably with existing approaches.

SLE local martingales in logarithmic representations

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kytölä, Kalle

2009-01-01

A space of local martingales of SLE-type growth processes forms a representation of Virasoro algebra, but apart from a few simplest cases, not much is known about this representation. The purpose of this paper is to exhibit examples of representations where L 0 is not diagonalizable—a phenomenon characteristic of logarithmic conformal field theory. Furthermore, we observe that the local martingales bear a close relation to the fusion product of the boundary changing fields. Our examples reproduce first of all many familiar logarithmic representations at certain rational values of the central charge. In particular we discuss the case of SLE κ=6 describing the exploration path in critical percolation and its relation to the question of operator content of the appropriate conformal field theory of zero central charge. In this case one encounters logarithms in a probabilistically transparent way, through conditioning on a crossing event. But we also observe that some quite natural SLE variants exhibit logarithmic behavior at all values of κ, thus at all central charges and not only at specific rational values

28 CFR 301.304 - Representation of claimant.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 28 Judicial Administration 2 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false Representation of claimant. 301.304 Section 301.304 Judicial Administration FEDERAL PRISON INDUSTRIES, INC., DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE INMATE ACCIDENT COMPENSATION Compensation for Work-Related Physical Impairment or Death § 301.304 Representation...

Digital models for architectonical representation

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Stefano Brusaporci

2011-12-01

Full Text Available Digital instruments and technologies enrich architectonical representation and communication opportunities. Computer graphics is organized according the two phases of visualization and construction, that is modeling and rendering, structuring dichotomy of software technologies. Visualization modalities give different kinds of representations of the same 3D model and instruments produce a separation between drawing and image’s creation. Reverse modeling can be related to a synthesis process, ‘direct modeling’ follows an analytic procedure. The difference between interactive and not interactive applications is connected to the possibilities offered by informatics instruments, and relates to modeling and rendering. At the same time the word ‘model’ describes different phenomenon (i.e. files: mathematical model of the building and of the scene; raster representation and post-processing model. All these correlated different models constitute the architectonical interpretative model, that is a simulation of reality made by the model for improving the knowledge.

Efficient convolutional sparse coding

Science.gov (United States)

Wohlberg, Brendt

2017-06-20

Computationally efficient algorithms may be applied for fast dictionary learning solving the convolutional sparse coding problem in the Fourier domain. More specifically, efficient convolutional sparse coding may be derived within an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) framework that utilizes fast Fourier transforms (FFT) to solve the main linear system in the frequency domain. Such algorithms may enable a significant reduction in computational cost over conventional approaches by implementing a linear solver for the most critical and computationally expensive component of the conventional iterative algorithm. The theoretical computational cost of the algorithm may be reduced from O(M.sup.3N) to O(MN log N), where N is the dimensionality of the data and M is the number of elements in the dictionary. This significant improvement in efficiency may greatly increase the range of problems that can practically be addressed via convolutional sparse representations.

A comprehensive study of sparse codes on abnormality detection

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ren, Huamin; Pan, Hong; Olsen, Søren Ingvor

2017-01-01

Sparse representation has been applied successfully in abnor-mal event detection, in which the baseline is to learn a dic-tionary accompanied by sparse codes. While much empha-sis is put on discriminative dictionary construction, there areno comparative studies of sparse codes regarding abnormal-ity...... detection. We comprehensively study two types of sparsecodes solutions - greedy algorithms and convex L1-norm so-lutions - and their impact on abnormality detection perfor-mance. We also propose our framework of combining sparsecodes with different detection methods. Our comparative ex-periments are carried...

GENII: The Hanford Environmental Radiation Dosimetry Software System: Volume 1, Conceptual representation

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Napier, B.A.; Peloquin, R.A.; Strenge, D.L.; Ramsdell, J.V.

1988-12-01

The Hanford Environmental Dosimetry Upgrade Project was undertaken to incorporate the internal dosimetry models recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) in updated versions of the environmental pathway analysis models used at Hanford. The resulting second generation of Hanford environmental dosimetry computer codes is compiled in the Hanford Environmental Dosimetry System (Generation II, or GENII). The purpose of this coupled system of computer codes is to analyze environmental contamination resulting from acute or chronic releases to, or initial contamination of, air, water, or soil. This is accomplished by calculating radiation doses to individuals or populations. GENII is described in three volumes of documentation. The first volume describes the theoretical considerations of the system. The second volume is a Users' Manual, providing code structure, users' instructions, required system configurations, and QA-related topics. The third volume is a Code Maintenance Manual for the user who requires knowledge of code detail. It includes code logic diagrams, global dictionary, worksheets, example hand calculations, and listings of the code and its associated data libraries. 72 refs., 15 figs., 34 tabs.

GENII: The Hanford Environmental Radiation Dosimetry Software System: Volume 1, Conceptual representation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Napier, B.A.; Peloquin, R.A.; Strenge, D.L.; Ramsdell, J.V.

1988-12-01

The Hanford Environmental Dosimetry Upgrade Project was undertaken to incorporate the internal dosimetry models recommended by the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) in updated versions of the environmental pathway analysis models used at Hanford. The resulting second generation of Hanford environmental dosimetry computer codes is compiled in the Hanford Environmental Dosimetry System (Generation II, or GENII). The purpose of this coupled system of computer codes is to analyze environmental contamination resulting from acute or chronic releases to, or initial contamination of, air, water, or soil. This is accomplished by calculating radiation doses to individuals or populations. GENII is described in three volumes of documentation. The first volume describes the theoretical considerations of the system. The second volume is a Users' Manual, providing code structure, users' instructions, required system configurations, and QA-related topics. The third volume is a Code Maintenance Manual for the user who requires knowledge of code detail. It includes code logic diagrams, global dictionary, worksheets, example hand calculations, and listings of the code and its associated data libraries. 72 refs., 15 figs., 34 tabs

Mental Representation and Motor Imagery Training

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Thomas eSchack

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Research in sports, dance and rehabilitation has shown that Basic Action Concepts (BACs are fundamental building blocks of mental action representations. BACs are based on chunked body postures related to common functions for realizing action goals. In this paper, we outline issues in research methodology and an experimental method, SDA-M (structural dimensional analysis of mental representation, to assess action-relevant representational structures that reflect the organization of BACs. The SDA-M reveals a strong relationship between cognitive representation and performance if complex actions are performed. We show how the SDA-M can improve motor imagery training and how it contributes to our understanding of coaching processes. The SDA-M capitalizes on the objective measurement of individual mental movement representations before training and the integration of these results into the motor imagery training. Such motor imagery training based on mental representations has been applied successfully in professional sports such as golf, volleyball, gymnastics, windsurfing, and recently in the rehabilitation of patients who have suffered a stroke.

Sparsey^TM: Spatiotemporal Event Recognition via Deep Hierarchical Sparse Distributed Codes

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Gerard J Rinkus

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The visual cortex’s hierarchical, multi-level organization is captured in many biologically inspired computational vision models, the general idea being that progressively larger scale (spatially/temporally and more complex visual features are represented in progressively higher areas. However, most earlier models use localist representations (codes in each representational field (which we equate with the cortical macrocolumn, mac, at each level. In localism, each represented feature/concept/event (hereinafter item is coded by a single unit. The model we describe, Sparsey, is hierarchical as well but crucially, it uses sparse distributed coding (SDC in every mac in all levels. In SDC, each represented item is coded by a small subset of the mac’s units. The SDCs of different items can overlap and the size of overlap between items can be used to represent their similarity. The difference between localism and SDC is crucial because SDC allows the two essential operations of associative memory, storing a new item and retrieving the best-matching stored item, to be done in fixed time for the life of the model. Since the model’s core algorithm, which does both storage and retrieval (inference, makes a single pass over all macs on each time step, the overall model’s storage/retrieval operation is also fixed-time, a criterion we consider essential for scalability to the huge (Big Data problems. A 2010 paper described a non-hierarchical version of this model in the context of purely spatial pattern processing. Here, we elaborate a fully hierarchical model (arbitrary numbers of levels and macs per level, describing novel model principles like progressive critical periods, dynamic modulation of principal cells’ activation functions based on a mac-level familiarity measure, representation of multiple simultaneously active hypotheses, a novel method of time warp invariant recognition, and we report results showing learning/recognition of

Fundamentals of the DIGES code

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Simos, N.; Philippacopoulos, A.J.

1994-08-01

Recently the authors have completed the development of the DIGES code (Direct GEneration of Spectra) for the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. This paper presents the fundamental theoretical aspects of the code. The basic modeling involves a representation of typical building-foundation configurations as multi degree-of-freedom dynamic which are subjected to dynamic inputs in the form of applied forces or pressure at the superstructure or in the form of ground motions. Both the deterministic as well as the probabilistic aspects of DIGES are described. Alternate ways of defining the seismic input for the estimation of in-structure spectra and their consequences in terms of realistically appraising the variability of the structural response is discussed in detaiL These include definitions of the seismic input by ground acceleration time histories, ground response spectra, Fourier amplitude spectra or power spectral densities. Conversions of one of these forms to another due to requirements imposed by certain analysis techniques have been shown to lead, in certain cases, in controversial results. Further considerations include the definition of the seismic input as the excitation which is directly applied at the foundation of a structure or as the ground motion of the site of interest at a given point. In the latter case issues related to the transferring of this motion to the foundation through convolution/deconvolution and generally through kinematic interaction approaches are considered.

Probabilistic hypergraph based hash codes for social image search

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

Yi XIE; Hui-min YU; Roland HU

2014-01-01

With the rapid development of the Internet, recent years have seen the explosive growth of social media. This brings great challenges in performing efficient and accurate image retrieval on a large scale. Recent work shows that using hashing methods to embed high-dimensional image features and tag information into Hamming space provides a powerful way to index large collections of social images. By learning hash codes through a spectral graph partitioning algorithm, spectral hashing (SH) has shown promising performance among various hashing approaches. However, it is incomplete to model the relations among images only by pairwise simple graphs which ignore the relationship in a higher order. In this paper, we utilize a probabilistic hypergraph model to learn hash codes for social image retrieval. A probabilistic hypergraph model offers a higher order repre-sentation among social images by connecting more than two images in one hyperedge. Unlike a normal hypergraph model, a probabilistic hypergraph model considers not only the grouping information, but also the similarities between vertices in hy-peredges. Experiments on Flickr image datasets verify the performance of our proposed approach.

Strong normalization by type-directed partial evaluation and run-time code generation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Balat, Vincent; Danvy, Olivier

1998-01-01

We investigate the synergy between type-directed partial evaluation and run-time code generation for the Caml dialect of ML. Type-directed partial evaluation maps simply typed, closed Caml values to a representation of their long βη-normal form. Caml uses a virtual machine and has the capability...... to load byte code at run time. Representing the long βη-normal forms as byte code gives us the ability to strongly normalize higher-order values (i.e., weak head normal forms in ML), to compile the resulting strong normal forms into byte code, and to load this byte code all in one go, at run time. We...... conclude this note with a preview of our current work on scaling up strong normalization by run-time code generation to the Caml module language....

Strong Normalization by Type-Directed Partial Evaluation and Run-Time Code Generation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Balat, Vincent; Danvy, Olivier

1997-01-01

We investigate the synergy between type-directed partial evaluation and run-time code generation for the Caml dialect of ML. Type-directed partial evaluation maps simply typed, closed Caml values to a representation of their long βη-normal form. Caml uses a virtual machine and has the capability...... to load byte code at run time. Representing the long βη-normal forms as byte code gives us the ability to strongly normalize higher-order values (i.e., weak head normal forms in ML), to compile the resulting strong normal forms into byte code, and to load this byte code all in one go, at run time. We...... conclude this note with a preview of our current work on scaling up strong normalization by run-time code generation to the Caml module language....

Linear Numerical-Magnitude Representations Aid Children's Memory for Numbers

Science.gov (United States)

Thompson, Clarissa A.; Siegler, Robert S.

2010-01-01

We investigated the relation between children's numerical-magnitude representations and their memory for numbers. Results of three experiments indicated that the more linear children's magnitude representations were, the more closely their memory of the numbers approximated the numbers presented. This relation was present for preschoolers and…

The task-relevant attribute representation can mediate the Simon effect.

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Dandan Tang

Full Text Available Researchers have previously suggested a working memory (WM account of spatial codes, and based on this suggestion, the present study carries out three experiments to investigate how the task-relevant attribute representation (verbal or visual in the typical Simon task affects the Simon effect. Experiment 1 compared the Simon effect between the between- and within-category color conditions, which required subjects to discriminate between red and blue stimuli (presumed to be represented by verbal WM codes because it was easy and fast to name the colors verbally and to discriminate between two similar green stimuli (presumed to be represented by visual WM codes because it was hard and time-consuming to name the colors verbally, respectively. The results revealed a reliable Simon effect that only occurs in the between-category condition. Experiment 2 assessed the Simon effect by requiring subjects to discriminate between two different isosceles trapezoids (within-category shapes and to discriminate isosceles trapezoid from rectangle (between-category shapes, and the results replicated and expanded the findings of Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, subjects were required to perform both tasks from Experiment 1. Wherein, in Experiment 3A, the between-category task preceded the within-category task; in Experiment 3B, the task order was opposite. The results showed the reliable Simon effect when subjects represented the task-relevant stimulus attributes by verbal WM encoding. In addition, the response times (RTs distribution analysis for both the between- and within-category conditions of Experiments 3A and 3B showed decreased Simon effect with the RTs lengthened. Altogether, although the present results are consistent with the temporal coding account, we put forth that the Simon effect also depends on the verbal WM representation of task-relevant stimulus attribute.

Bruner's Three Forms of Representation Revisited: Action, Pictures and Words for Effective Computer Instruction.

Science.gov (United States)

Presno, Caroline

1997-01-01

Discusses computer instruction in light of Bruner's theory of three forms of representation (action, icons, and symbols). Examines how studies regarding Paivio's dual-coding theory and studies focusing on procedural knowledge support Bruner's theory. Provides specific examples for instruction in three categories: demonstrations, pictures and…

Symposium on Singularities, Representation of Algebras, and Vector Bundles

CERN Document Server

Trautmann, Günther

1987-01-01

It is well known that there are close relations between classes of singularities and representation theory via the McKay correspondence and between representation theory and vector bundles on projective spaces via the Bernstein-Gelfand-Gelfand construction. These relations however cannot be considered to be either completely understood or fully exploited. These proceedings document recent developments in the area. The questions and methods of representation theory have applications to singularities and to vector bundles. Representation theory itself, which had primarily developed its methods for Artinian algebras, starts to investigate algebras of higher dimension partly because of these applications. Future research in representation theory may be spurred by the classification of singularities and the highly developed theory of moduli for vector bundles. The volume contains 3 survey articles on the 3 main topics mentioned, stressing their interrelationships, as well as original research papers.

Minimal representations and Freudenthal triple systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Olive, D.

2004-01-01

Unitary representations of noncompact Lie groups have long been sought in physics. The first nice concrete construction was found by Dirac in connection with the anti-de Sitter group. Some subsequent generalizations will be described, in particular the minimal representation thought to be relevant to realising duality in supergravity superstring theories. A relation to Freudenthal triple systems will be described. (author)

Social selection in cohort studies and later representation of childhood psychiatric diagnoses: The Danish National Birth Cohort

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Madsen, Kathrine Bang; Hohwü, Lena; Zhu, Jin Liang

2017-01-01

AIM: This study aimed to estimate the relative representation of childhood psychiatric diagnoses and use of psychotropic medication in the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC) compared to the general population. METHODS: The general population was identified as all childbirths in Denmark during 1998......) with corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) were estimated for each psychiatric diagnosis and by sex. Age at first diagnosis presented as means were compared using the one-sample t-test. RESULTS: In the DNBC, the selected childhood psychiatric diagnoses were underrepresented by 3% (PR=0.97, 95% CI 0.......94-0.99), ranging from a 20% underrepresentation for schizophrenia (PR=0.80, 95% CI 0.59-1.09) to a 6% over-representation for anxiety disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder (PR=1.06, 95% CI 0.97-1.17). The majority of the specific diagnoses were modestly underrepresented in the DNBC compared to the general...

Computational Account of Spontaneous Activity as a Signature of Predictive Coding.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Veronika Koren

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Spontaneous activity is commonly observed in a variety of cortical states. Experimental evidence suggested that neural assemblies undergo slow oscillations with Up ad Down states even when the network is isolated from the rest of the brain. Here we show that these spontaneous events can be generated by the recurrent connections within the network and understood as signatures of neural circuits that are correcting their internal representation. A noiseless spiking neural network can represent its input signals most accurately when excitatory and inhibitory currents are as strong and as tightly balanced as possible. However, in the presence of realistic neural noise and synaptic delays, this may result in prohibitively large spike counts. An optimal working regime can be found by considering terms that control firing rates in the objective function from which the network is derived and then minimizing simultaneously the coding error and the cost of neural activity. In biological terms, this is equivalent to tuning neural thresholds and after-spike hyperpolarization. In suboptimal working regimes, we observe spontaneous activity even in the absence of feed-forward inputs. In an all-to-all randomly connected network, the entire population is involved in Up states. In spatially organized networks with local connectivity, Up states spread through local connections between neurons of similar selectivity and take the form of a traveling wave. Up states are observed for a wide range of parameters and have similar statistical properties in both active and quiescent state. In the optimal working regime, Up states are vanishing, leaving place to asynchronous activity, suggesting that this working regime is a signature of maximally efficient coding. Although they result in a massive increase in the firing activity, the read-out of spontaneous Up states is in fact orthogonal to the stimulus representation, therefore interfering minimally with the network

Smoothing-Based Relative Navigation and Coded Aperture Imaging

Science.gov (United States)

Saenz-Otero, Alvar; Liebe, Carl Christian; Hunter, Roger C.; Baker, Christopher

2017-01-01

This project will develop an efficient smoothing software for incremental estimation of the relative poses and velocities between multiple, small spacecraft in a formation, and a small, long range depth sensor based on coded aperture imaging that is capable of identifying other spacecraft in the formation. The smoothing algorithm will obtain the maximum a posteriori estimate of the relative poses between the spacecraft by using all available sensor information in the spacecraft formation.This algorithm will be portable between different satellite platforms that possess different sensor suites and computational capabilities, and will be adaptable in the case that one or more satellites in the formation become inoperable. It will obtain a solution that will approach an exact solution, as opposed to one with linearization approximation that is typical of filtering algorithms. Thus, the algorithms developed and demonstrated as part of this program will enhance the applicability of small spacecraft to multi-platform operations, such as precisely aligned constellations and fractionated satellite systems.

Representations for Supporting Students' Context Awareness

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Demetriadis, Stavros N.; Papadopoulos, Pantelis M.

2005-01-01

The context of the specific situation where knowledge is applied affects significantly the problem solving process by forcing people to negotiate and reconsider the priorities of their mental representations and problem solving operators, in relation to this process. In this work we argue...... that students’ context awareness can significantly be enhanced by the use of appropriate external representations which guide them to activate context inducing cognitive processes. By embedding such representations in a case based learning environment we expect to guide students’ processing of the rich...... in contextual information material, in a way that improves both their context awareness and metacontextual competence. After presenting a context model, we discuss the design of such representations based on this model and explain why we expect that their use in a learning situation would enhance context...

Minimal-memory realization of pearl-necklace encoders of general quantum convolutional codes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Houshmand, Monireh; Hosseini-Khayat, Saied

2011-01-01

Quantum convolutional codes, like their classical counterparts, promise to offer higher error correction performance than block codes of equivalent encoding complexity, and are expected to find important applications in reliable quantum communication where a continuous stream of qubits is transmitted. Grassl and Roetteler devised an algorithm to encode a quantum convolutional code with a ''pearl-necklace'' encoder. Despite their algorithm's theoretical significance as a neat way of representing quantum convolutional codes, it is not well suited to practical realization. In fact, there is no straightforward way to implement any given pearl-necklace structure. This paper closes the gap between theoretical representation and practical implementation. In our previous work, we presented an efficient algorithm to find a minimal-memory realization of a pearl-necklace encoder for Calderbank-Shor-Steane (CSS) convolutional codes. This work is an extension of our previous work and presents an algorithm for turning a pearl-necklace encoder for a general (non-CSS) quantum convolutional code into a realizable quantum convolutional encoder. We show that a minimal-memory realization depends on the commutativity relations between the gate strings in the pearl-necklace encoder. We find a realization by means of a weighted graph which details the noncommutative paths through the pearl necklace. The weight of the longest path in this graph is equal to the minimal amount of memory needed to implement the encoder. The algorithm has a polynomial-time complexity in the number of gate strings in the pearl-necklace encoder.

Dock Sud's environmental pollution: Spatial representations, space representation and spatial practices in peripheral neighborhoods

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sandra Valeria Ursino

2012-01-01

Full Text Available In this article, we present some of the results and argumentative lines used in the analysis of the field work carried out in the neighborhoods of Porst, Danubio and Villa Inflamable, in the Dock Sud area, located in the district of Avellaneda, province de Buenos Aires, during 2010 and 2011. Within this framework, we observed and recorded the inhabitants' usual routes around the neighborhood, which is environmentally polluted but which has also been symbolically appropriated. Along these lines then, our general aim was to learn about social representations, representation spaces and the spatial practices of the inhabitants of the most affected neighborhoods of Dock Sud due to the area's environmental issues. To this end, there was a reconstruction of the subjects' practices in the neighborhood, of the hegemonic discourse about the pollution in this place and, finally, the population's conflict and struggle practices

Social representations about cancer

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andreja Cirila Škufca

2003-09-01

Full Text Available In this article we are presenting the results of the comparison study on social representations and causal attributions about cancer. We compared a breast cancer survivors group and control group without own experience of cancer of their own. Although social representations about cancer differ in each group, they are closely related to the concept of suffering, dying and death. We found differences in causal attribution of cancer. In both groups we found a category of risky behavior, which attributes a responsibility for a disease to an individual. Besides these factors we found predominate stress and psychological influences in cancer survivors group. On the other hand control group indicated factors outside the ones control e.g. heredity and environmental factors. Representations about a disease inside person's social space are important in co-shaping the individual process of coping with own disease. Since these representations are not always coherent with the knowledge of modern medicine their knowledge and appreciation in the course of treatment is of great value. We find the findingss of applied social psychology important as starting points in the therapeutic work with patients.

Potential role of monkey inferior parietal neurons coding action semantic equivalences as precursors of parts of speech.

Science.gov (United States)

Yamazaki, Yumiko; Yokochi, Hiroko; Tanaka, Michio; Okanoya, Kazuo; Iriki, Atsushi

2010-01-01

The anterior portion of the inferior parietal cortex possesses comprehensive representations of actions embedded in behavioural contexts. Mirror neurons, which respond to both self-executed and observed actions, exist in this brain region in addition to those originally found in the premotor cortex. We found that parietal mirror neurons responded differentially to identical actions embedded in different contexts. Another type of parietal mirror neuron represents an inverse and complementary property of responding equally to dissimilar actions made by itself and others for an identical purpose. Here, we propose a hypothesis that these sets of inferior parietal neurons constitute a neural basis for encoding the semantic equivalence of various actions across different agents and contexts. The neurons have mirror neuron properties, and they encoded generalization of agents, differentiation of outcomes, and categorization of actions that led to common functions. By integrating the activities of these mirror neurons with various codings, we further suggest that in the ancestral primates' brains, these various representations of meaningful action led to the gradual establishment of equivalence relations among the different types of actions, by sharing common action semantics. Such differential codings of the components of actions might represent precursors to the parts of protolanguage, such as gestural communication, which are shared among various members of a society. Finally, we suggest that the inferior parietal cortex serves as an interface between this action semantics system and other higher semantic systems, through common structures of action representation that mimic language syntax.

Two-Dimensional Theory of Scientific Representation

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A Yaghmaie

2013-03-01

Full Text Available Scientific representation is an interesting topic for philosophers of science, many of whom have recently explored it from different points of view. There are currently two competing approaches to the issue: cognitive and non-cognitive, and each of them claims its own merits over the other. This article tries to provide a hybrid theory of scientific representation, called Two-Dimensional Theory of Scientific Representation, which has the merits of the two accounts and is free of their shortcomings. To do this, we will argue that although scientific representation needs to use the notion of intentionality, such a notion is defined and realized in a simply structural form contrary to what cognitive approach says about intentionality. After a short introduction, the second part of the paper is devoted to introducing theories of scientific representation briefly. In the third part, the structural accounts of representation will be criticized. The next step is to introduce the two-dimensional theory which involves two key components: fixing and structural fitness. It will be argued that fitness is an objective and non-intentional relation, while fixing is intentional.

SARAJEVO LOST IN TRANSITION? Ideologies and Their Representational Spaces

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Nermina Zagora

2014-03-01

Full Text Available This study aims to investigate three characteristic representational typologies in Sarajevo, in regard to Henri Lefebvre's theory of “Production of Space.” Representational typologies are considered as a tool in the hands of power holders capable of influencing, motivating or manipulating wider population. The comparative analysis of the deterministic link between the social system and architecture will be examined in order to highlight the universal qualities of architecture capable of outliving the liminal momentum of transitions from one socio-political system to another.

The representation of object viewpoint in human visual cortex.

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Andresen, David R; Vinberg, Joakim; Grill-Spector, Kalanit

2009-04-01

Understanding the nature of object representations in the human brain is critical for understanding the neural basis of invariant object recognition. However, the degree to which object representations are sensitive to object viewpoint is unknown. Using fMRI we employed a parametric approach to examine the sensitivity to object view as a function of rotation (0 degrees-180 degrees ), category (animal/vehicle) and fMRI-adaptation paradigm (short or long-lagged). For both categories and fMRI-adaptation paradigms, object-selective regions recovered from adaptation when a rotated view of an object was shown after adaptation to a specific view of that object, suggesting that representations are sensitive to object rotation. However, we found evidence for differential representations across categories and ventral stream regions. Rotation cross-adaptation was larger for animals than vehicles, suggesting higher sensitivity to vehicle than animal rotation, and was largest in the left fusiform/occipito-temporal sulcus (pFUS/OTS), suggesting that this region has low sensitivity to rotation. Moreover, right pFUS/OTS and FFA responded more strongly to front than back views of animals (without adaptation) and rotation cross-adaptation depended both on the level of rotation and the adapting view. This result suggests a prevalence of neurons that prefer frontal views of animals in fusiform regions. Using a computational model of view-tuned neurons, we demonstrate that differential neural view tuning widths and relative distributions of neural-tuned populations in fMRI voxels can explain the fMRI results. Overall, our findings underscore the utility of parametric approaches for studying the neural basis of object invariance and suggest that there is no complete invariance to object view in the human ventral stream.

High-Fidelity Coding with Correlated Neurons

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da Silveira, Rava Azeredo; Berry, Michael J.

2014-01-01

Positive correlations in the activity of neurons are widely observed in the brain. Previous studies have shown these correlations to be detrimental to the fidelity of population codes, or at best marginally favorable compared to independent codes. Here, we show that positive correlations can enhance coding performance by astronomical factors. Specifically, the probability of discrimination error can be suppressed by many orders of magnitude. Likewise, the number of stimuli encoded—the capacity—can be enhanced more than tenfold. These effects do not necessitate unrealistic correlation values, and can occur for populations with a few tens of neurons. We further show that both effects benefit from heterogeneity commonly seen in population activity. Error suppression and capacity enhancement rest upon a pattern of correlation. Tuning of one or several effective parameters can yield a limit of perfect coding: the corresponding pattern of positive correlation leads to a ‘lock-in’ of response probabilities that eliminates variability in the subspace relevant for stimulus discrimination. We discuss the nature of this pattern and we suggest experimental tests to identify it. PMID:25412463

Uncertainty representation of grey numbers and grey sets.

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Yang, Yingjie; Liu, Sifeng; John, Robert

2014-09-01

In the literature, there is a presumption that a grey set and an interval-valued fuzzy set are equivalent. This presumption ignores the existence of discrete components in a grey number. In this paper, new measurements of uncertainties of grey numbers and grey sets, consisting of both absolute and relative uncertainties, are defined to give a comprehensive representation of uncertainties in a grey number and a grey set. Some simple examples are provided to illustrate that the proposed uncertainty measurement can give an effective representation of both absolute and relative uncertainties in a grey number and a grey set. The relationships between grey sets and interval-valued fuzzy sets are also analyzed from the point of view of the proposed uncertainty representation. The analysis demonstrates that grey sets and interval-valued fuzzy sets provide different but overlapping models for uncertainty representation in sets.

Polynomial parameterized representation of macroscopic cross section for PWR reactor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fiel, Joao Claudio B.

2015-01-01

The purpose of this work is to describe, by means of Tchebychev polynomial, a parameterized representation of the homogenized macroscopic cross section for PWR fuel element as a function of soluble boron concentration, moderator temperature, fuel temperature, moderator density and 235 U 92 enrichment. Analyzed cross sections are: fission, scattering, total, transport, absorption and capture. This parameterization enables a quick and easy determination of the problem-dependent cross-sections to be used in few groups calculations. The methodology presented here will enable to provide cross-sections values to perform PWR core calculations without the need to generate them based on computer code calculations using standard steps. The results obtained by parameterized cross-sections functions, when compared with the cross-section generated by SCALE code calculations, or when compared with K inf , generated by MCNPX code calculations, show a difference of less than 0.7 percent. (author)

Gender Representation Trends and Relations at the United States Naval Academy

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Lewis, Joshua R; Lewis, Shannon F

2005-01-01

.... Representation of women has increased to the current high of around 16%. Further, the data revealed similarities and differences between men and women in terms of their non-gender characteristics...

Predicting Motivation: Computational Models of PFC Can Explain Neural Coding of Motivation and Effort-based Decision-making in Health and Disease.

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Vassena, Eliana; Deraeve, James; Alexander, William H

2017-10-01

Human behavior is strongly driven by the pursuit of rewards. In daily life, however, benefits mostly come at a cost, often requiring that effort be exerted to obtain potential benefits. Medial PFC (MPFC) and dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC) are frequently implicated in the expectation of effortful control, showing increased activity as a function of predicted task difficulty. Such activity partially overlaps with expectation of reward and has been observed both during decision-making and during task preparation. Recently, novel computational frameworks have been developed to explain activity in these regions during cognitive control, based on the principle of prediction and prediction error (predicted response-outcome [PRO] model [Alexander, W. H., & Brown, J. W. Medial prefrontal cortex as an action-outcome predictor. Nature Neuroscience, 14, 1338-1344, 2011], hierarchical error representation [HER] model [Alexander, W. H., & Brown, J. W. Hierarchical error representation: A computational model of anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Neural Computation, 27, 2354-2410, 2015]). Despite the broad explanatory power of these models, it is not clear whether they can also accommodate effects related to the expectation of effort observed in MPFC and DLPFC. Here, we propose a translation of these computational frameworks to the domain of effort-based behavior. First, we discuss how the PRO model, based on prediction error, can explain effort-related activity in MPFC, by reframing effort-based behavior in a predictive context. We propose that MPFC activity reflects monitoring of motivationally relevant variables (such as effort and reward), by coding expectations and discrepancies from such expectations. Moreover, we derive behavioral and neural model-based predictions for healthy controls and clinical populations with impairments of motivation. Second, we illustrate the possible translation to effort-based behavior of the HER model, an extended version of PRO

Transient Variable Caching in Java’s Stack-Based Intermediate Representation

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Paul Týma

1999-01-01

Full Text Available Java’s stack‐based intermediate representation (IR is typically coerced to execute on register‐based architectures. Unoptimized compiled code dutifully replicates transient variable usage designated by the programmer and common optimization practices tend to introduce further usage (i.e., CSE, Loop‐invariant Code Motion, etc.. On register based machines, often transient variables are cached within registers (when available saving the expense of actually accessing memory. Unfortunately, in stack‐based environments because of the need to push and pop the transient values, further performance improvement is possible. This paper presents Transient Variable Caching (TVC, a technique for eliminating transient variable overhead whenever possible. This optimization would find a likely home in optimizers attached to the back of popular Java compilers. Side effects of the algorithm include significant instruction reordering and introduction of many stack‐manipulation operations. This combination has proven to greatly impede the ability to decompile stack‐based IR code sequences. The code that results from the transform is faster, smaller, and greatly impedes decompilation.