Photo-neuroendocrine control of seasonal cycles in body weight, pelage growth and reproduction: lessons from the HPD sheep model

Two experiments are reported in which the relationship between the orientation of the typical contour of a lamella in relation to the observer, and the ability of the observer to learn the correct position and orientation of sets of lamellae in three-dimensional arrays, was examined. For lamellae presented with their typical contour in a plane other than the observer's frontoparallel plane, the results of both experiments indicated that participants encoded lamellae in such a way that their typical contour appeared to be closer to the observer's frontoparallel plane than the respective stimulus. The relationship of the present findings to previous results on children's drawings and to the concept of the picture plane are considered.     

Improving Green Building Education by Addressing the Learning Style and Prior Knowledge of Students

Green building education requires successful teamwork of students from different disciplines to solve challenging problems. Team performance depends on both team process behavior and team cognition. There have been many studies on team process behavior such as communication. However, establishing a common understanding of a team, i.e., the essential part of team cognition, still lacks adequate research. To gain this common understanding, concept learning is critical. A concept learning process can be improved when factors affecting it are addressed. This paper discusses the results of an empirical study addressing the relationship between the concept learning process and such a factor, the learning style of students, in a multidisciplinary team context. An experiment was conducted comparing two groups of students in terms of acquiring knowledge about certain concepts in green building. One group learned concepts by using a conventional method, and the other group was given concepts customized to their learning styles. Tests were conducted at various stages, and the results were statistically analyzed. The findings indicate that, in general, the group that was given customized study materials showed significantly more improvement in their concept learning than the group who learned concepts through conventional materials. This initial finding is based on a small group of students. Additional studies on the impact of other factors such as thinking style need to be conducted in the future.     

Difficult physician-patient relations--characteristics and possible solutions

We have demonstrated that expectations of physicians and patients differ and, furthermore, that the mutual exchange of information is incomplete. We pointed to the problem of the observer's role explaining that differing subjective realities are common and not at all the exception. One possible approach to a common reality between physician and patient has been introduced by the role of the listening physician. It is also shown that necessary skills to communicate can be acquired by training. In the last paragraph studies are summarized which demonstrate that a partnership between physician and patient, especially during the exchange of informations and during search for a decision, influences behaviour and health of patients positively.     

Visual guidance of walking through apertures: Body-scaled information for affordances.

A necessary condition for visually guided action is that an organism perceive what actions are afforded by a given environmental situation. Warren (1984) proposed that an affordance such as the climbability of a stairway is determined by the fit between properties of the environment and the organism and can be characterized by optimal points, where action is most comfortable or efficient, and critical points, where a phase transition to a new action occurs. Perceiving an affordance, then, implies perceiving the relation between the environment and the observer's own action system. The present study is an extension of this analysis to the visual guidance of walking through apertures. We videotaped large and small subjects walking through apertures of different widths to determine empirically the critical aperture-to-shoulder-width ratio (A/S) marking the transition from frontal walking to body rotation. These results were compared with perceptual judgments of "passability" under static and moving viewing conditions. Finally, we tested the hypothesis that such judgments are based on intrinsic or body-scaled information specifying aperture width as a ratio of the observer's eyeheight. We conclude (a) that the critical point in free walking occurs at A/S?=?1.30, (b) that static monocular information is sufficient for judging passability, and (c) that the perception of passability under such conditions is based on body-scaled eyeheight information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motion segmentation in artificial and biological system

In the early steps of visual information processing motion is one of the most important queues for the development of spatial representations. Obstacle detection and egomotion estimation are only two examples of the powerfulness of visual motion detection systems. The underlying process of information extraction has to be active due to the observer's capabilities of egomotion. This means that the observer's motion has an impact on the projected retinal motion field. Therefore one of the challenging tasks for biological as well as for technical vision systems is to couple retinal motion and egomotion and to uncouple egomotion and object motion. The following sections describe a model that couples visual motion processing with the egomotion parameters of a moving observer. Beneath a theoretical introduction of the model an application to traffic scene analysis is presented. At last the paper relates the model to biological motion processing systems.     

Radial optic flow induces vergence eye movements with ultra-short latencies

An observer moving forwards through the environment experiences a radial pattern of image motion on each retina. Such patterns of optic flow are a potential source of information about the observer's rate of progress, direction of heading and time to reach objects that lie ahead. As the viewing distance changes there must be changes in the vergence angle between the two eyes so that both foveas remain aligned on the object of interest in the scene ahead. Here we show that radial optic flow can elicit appropriately directed (horizontal) vergence eye movements with ultra-short latencies (roughly 80 ms) in human subjects. Centrifugal flow, signalling forwards motion, increases the vergence angle, whereas centripetal flow decreases the vergence angle. These vergence eye movements are still evident when the observer's view of the flow pattern is restricted to the temporal hemifield of one eye, indicating that these responses do not result from anisotropies in motion processing but from a mechanism that senses the radial pattern of flow. We hypothesize that flow-induced vergence is but one of a family of rapid ocular reflexes, mediated by the medial superior temporal cortex, compensating for translational disturbance of the observer.     

加热炉内流场的模拟与分析

运用流体动力学计算软件(CFD)fluent,对湘潭钢铁公司第二高速线材厂轧钢加热炉的三维流场进行了数值模拟,获得该轧钢加热炉内的气体流动、流速和压力的分布规律。对加热炉内的气体流动状况、速度分布和压力分布的特点分析表明,该加热炉的局部结构不适应加热炉的操作要求。模拟计算结果与加热质量和加热炉的实际运行相符,为加热炉的进一步结构改造提供了依据。     

Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis suppression and inhaled corticosteroid therapy. 1. General principles

The safety of long-term inhaled corticosteroid therapy at commonly prescribed doses is an issue of growing concern to physicians and international regulatory bodies. This is so because long-term use of these drugs has become the mainstay of chronic asthma management and their introduction now is widely recommended in official treatment guidelines at the 'mild persistent' stage of asthma, where regular daily therapy is first begun. In addition to more frequent use of inhaled corticosteroids, there is a further trend to use higher doses of existing inhaler therapies and to use the newer and more potent compounds that have recently become available. At the same time as these developments have been taking place, there has not been a concurrent move to a more rigorous examination of the safety profile of these inhaled corticosteroid treatments - especially to assess their effects on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Most safety data with respect to HPA axis effects have been derived from testing methods that are limited in their ability to detect HPA system impairment and, more seriously, that can give the impression of functional integrity in the HPA axis when there may be moderate (or even greater) impairment. In this first part of a two-part review of the HPA axis effects of inhaled corticosteroids and of how these effects should be assessed, we examine the currently used and the currently available testing methodologies and also review the present state of knowledge concerning the structure and function of the HPA axis and the effects of its suppression. It is clear that there are state-of-the-art tests to assess in a discriminating manner the safety profile of inhaled corticosteroids. These tests have been insufficiently employed, including during the drug development process, yet they are readily available, relatively inexpensive and can detect adrenal suppression before the appearance of clinical effects. In part 2 of this review we examine what can be learned about the effects of inhaled corticosteroid therapy on the HPA axis from the limited amount of reliable published information from clinical and pharmacological studies describing their use and safety.     

Induced movement in the visual modality: An overview.

Induced movement, illusory movement in a stationary stimulus resulting from adjoining movement, has received steady experimental investigation over the last 70 years or so. It is observed under different viewing conditions in a wide variety of displays that differ considerably in overall size and in form of inducing and induced stimuli. Explanations have been diverse, some being based on relations within the display and others invoking mediation by other aspects of the observer's perception. Probably, no one explanation can account for all forms of induced movement. Current knowledge about induced movement may have important implications for visual perception of object motion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The spatial organization of the EEG and individual psychological characteristics

The influence of cognitive styles (analytic versus synthetic style, rigid versus flexible cognitive control, impulsivity versus reflexivity, field-dependence versus independence) on the information brain processes was estimated by means of analysis of spatial organization of cortical electrical activity (48 derivations) in 40 right-handed subjects (aged from 18 to 40) during their realization of verbal and non-verbal tasks using successive and simultaneous processing modes. Modulation of the "cognitive axis" (activity of the left anterior and right posterior cortical areas) was revealed connected with the factor of task subjective difficulty, especially in case of simultaneous processing mode. The combination of the synthetic cognitive style and flexibility of the cognitive control may be thought of as being the most favourable for the activation of the "cognitive axis" and utilization of the left- and right-hemispheric information processing, especially in non-standard situations.     

Adaptive Control Strategy for Dynamic Substructuring Tests

Real-time dynamic substructuring, or hybrid testing, is a technique that enables experimental testing of critical elements of a complete structure. The structure in question is decomposed into at least two parts: the critical element, which is physically tested, and the remainder of the structure, which is modeled numerically. For accurate replication of the system to be emulated, the two parts must interact, via a controller to compensate for the actuator dynamics, in real-time, and with minimal errors at their interfaces. During development, the adaptive minimal controller synthesis (MCS) algorithm controller has previously been implemented for substructuring of a one-degree-of-freedom mass-spring-damper system. The potential advantage that MCS has over a traditional linear controller is its lack of reliance on detailed knowledge of the experimental specimen dynamics. This paper presents the MCSmd control strategy, an improved MCS-based strategy for substructure testing, using a modified demand (md) signal. Experimental and simulation studies of the MCSmd controller applied to a two-degree-of-freedom mass spring damper system are presented along with an analysis of the transient gain behavior.     

Perceiving affordances for another person's actions.

The perception of affordances for the actions of other people (actors) was examined. Observers judged the maximum and preferred sitting heights of tall and short actors. Judgments were scaled in centimeters, as a proportion of the observer's leg length, and as a proportion of each actor's leg length. In Experiment 1 observers viewed live actors standing next to a chair. When judgments were scaled by actor leg length, they reflected the actual ordinal relation between the capabilities of the actors. The perception of affordances from kinematic displays was then evaluated. Observers differentiated tall and short actors, but only when the displays contained direct information about relations between the actors and the chair. It is concluded that observers can perceive affordances for the actions of actors and that kinematic displays can be enough to support such percepts if they preserve actor–environment relations that define affordances. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motor skill: Feedback, knowledge, and structural issues.

Discusses feedback processing of and structural constraints on movement. From a review of the relevant research, it is argued that the time to process feedback has been generally overestimated for aiming movements of the hand and that visual information about the target and especially the hand is important, as is the rapid processing of kinesthetic feedback. It is proposed that skilled aiming movement is a product of tightly coupled efferent and afferent information within a sensorimotor system comprising the eyes, head, and hand. In consideration of the relationship between knowledge and movement, a review of the research suggests that production systems for motor skill should include constraints of musculoskeletal and neural structures as well as constraints of structure in environmental information. It is concluded that accounts of motor skills might profitably include movement dynamics (in physical terms), the skill-specific knowledge base through which objectives are defined, and the biological apparatus for realizing those objectives. (French abstract) (3? p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nitric oxide-mediated renal epithelial cell injury during hypoxia and reoxygenation

If two targets are both on the visual axis of one eye or the other, and binocular fixation is shifted from the farther one to the nearer, the aligned eye consistently makes an initial, seemingly pointless saccade in a temporal direction. The size of those saccades typically differs markedly, depending on whether the targets are aligned with the observer's dominant or non-dominant eye. Pickwell [(1972) Vision Research, 12, 1499-1507] proposed that this binocular asymmetry in oculomotor performance reflects a subject-specific lateral displacement of the egocenter (the "binoculus" of Hering, which has traditionally been assumed to be on the midline). An empirical test of Pickwell's widely endorsed hypothesis has now been conducted and the proposal has been found wanting. In an otherwise darkened room, subjects were required repeatedly to set a small light to a perceived straight-ahead location in the horizontal plane, first for a target at 300 cm distance and then for one at 30 cm. Extrapolation of a line that connects the two averages of those settings to the inter-ocular axis provides an estimate of the subjective egocenter to which visual directions are referred. Contrary to Pickwell's proposal, those locations of the inferred egocenter were usually quite near the midline, and were completely uncorrelated with same-subject data on the extent of saccadic asymmetry at the onset of asymmetrical convergence. The data on perceived straight-ahead underlying this result indicate the availability of extraretinal information about eye orientation that is quite precise at a given moment (median standard deviation of 47 min arc) but conspicuously non-stationary over several-minute intervals (monotonic drifts in sequential settings being very common).     

知识图谱的最新进展、关键技术和挑战

围绕知识图谱的全生命周期技术，从知识抽取、知识融合、知识推理、知识应用几个层面展开综述，重点介绍了知识融合技术和知识推理技术。通过知识抽取技术，可从已有的结构化、半结构化、非结构化样本源以及一些开源的百科类网站抽取实体、关系、属性等知识要素。通过知识融合，可消除实体、关系、属性等指称项与实体对象之间的歧义，得到一系列基本的事实表达。通过本体抽取、知识推理和质量评估形成最终的知识图谱库。按照知识抽取、知识融合、知识推理3个步骤对知识图谱迭代更新，实现碎片化的互联网知识的自动抽取、自动关联和融合、自动加工，从而拥有词条自动化链接、词条编辑辅助功能，最终达成全流程自动化知识获取的目标。最后，讨论知识图谱未来的发展方向与可能存在的挑战。      

How do psychiatric patients experience interactions with their relatives?

Numerous studies have established the prognostic validity of family attitudes and interactional behaviors in psychiatric disorders. However, most have relied on observer-rated rather than patient-rated measures of the family context. Bipolar patients (N?=?31) rated their relatives' verbal behaviors in problem-solving discussions using the Patient's Experiences of a Relative's Affective Style (PERAS) scale. The PERAS had acceptable reliability and internal consistency. Patients' PERAS judgments of the frequencies of harsh and benign criticisms in relatives correlated positively with an observer's affective style (AS) ratings of these same behaviors in relatives. However, patients' ratings of intrusiveness and support in relatives were unrelated to the observer's AS ratings. The PERAS is a promising measure of how patients experience their family interactions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Speed gradients and the perception of surface slant: analysis is two-dimensional not one-dimensional

Motion parallax provides cues to the three-dimensional layout of a viewed scene and, in particular, to surface tilt and slant. For example, as a textured surface, inclined around a horizontal axis, translates horizontally relative to an observer's view point, then, in the absence of head and eye movements, the observer's retinal flow will contain a one-dimensional (1D) vertical speed gradient. The direction of this gradient indicates the direction of surface tilt, and its magnitude and sign can be used in calculating the magnitude and sign of the surface slant. Alternatively, the same retinal flow contains a 1D translating component, plus a two-dimensional (2D) component of rotation (curl), and a 2D component of deformation (def). On this view, the direction of surface tilt is related to the orientation of def and the magnitude and sign of the surface slant is related to the magnitude and sign of def. We used computer generated random dot patterns as stimuli to determine whether the human visual system employs a 1D analysis (i.e. 1D speed gradients) or a 2D analysis (i.e. deformation) of surface slant from motion parallax. Using a matching technique we found compelling impressions of slant when we vector summed a translation field with (i) vertical shear, horizontal shear or deformation (made from vertical and horizontal shear), but not rotation; and (ii) vertical compression, horizontal compression or deformation (made from vertical and horizontal compression), but much less so for expansion. In both cases, the first three conditions contain def, but the fourth does not, and the last three conditions contain 1D speed gradients orthogonal to the perceived axis of inclination, but the first one does not. Therefore, the results from the first and fourth conditions distinguish between the two processing strategies. They support the idea that surface slant is coded by combining both horizontal and vertical speed gradients in a way similar to the 2D differential invariant def and oppose the view that surface slant is encoded by a 1D analysis of motion in a direction orthogonal to the perceived axis of inclination. In a further experiment, we found essentially no effect of reducing the field size from 18 to 9 deg.     

Luminance contrast and spatial-frequency tuning of the transient-vergence system

Vergence has transient components that are stimulated by brief presentations of stimuli at large disparities (up to several degrees). The question that we have addressed is what stimulus features are encoded by this system. A competition paradigm [Jones & Kerr, (1972)]. Vision Research, 12, 1425-1430) was used in which three gabors were presented. A single Gabor was presented to the fovea of one eye and two gabors, 2.5 deg to either side of the fovea, to the other; one of which, when paired with the single Gabor defined a convergent direction, the other a divergent direction. First we determined if increasing the luminance contrast of the Gabor pair whose disparity was opposite to the observer's response-bias direction (variable-contrast pair) relative to the remaining Gabor (reference) could alter the observer's response direction. Secondly, we determined if the contrast required for such a change in response was affected by the relative spatial frequency of the convergent and divergent Gabors. The reference Gabor was held at 2 cpd and the variable Gabor pair was varied between 5.6 and 0 (a gaussian) cpd. Results demonstrated that increasing the luminance contrast of the variable pair relative to the reference Gabor could alter the observer's response direction, even when the contrast of only one of the variable-pair Gabors was increased. The luminance contrast required for this change to occur was directly related to the spatial frequency of the variable pair over the entire frequency range tested. Vergence responses were preferentially made to lower spatial frequencies, even when a low spatial frequency was pared with a high one. We conclude that transient-vergence responses are not reduced by mixed contrasts (i.e. no contrast-paradox effect) and appear to be mediated by a system that employs a single lowpass sensitive channel.     

Enduring Interest in Perceptual Ambiguity: Alternating Views of Reversible Figures.

Research favoring the so-called bottom-up and top-down classes of explanations for reversible figures that dominated the literature in last half of the 20th century is reviewed. Two conclusions are offered. First, any single-process model is extremely unlikely to be able to accommodate the wide array of empirical findings, suggesting that the "final" explanation will almost certainly involve a hybrid conceptualization of interacting sensory and cognitive processes. Second, the utility of distinguishing between 2 components of the observer's experience with reversible figures is emphasized. This distinction between the observer's ability to access multiple representations from the single stimulus pattern (ambiguity) and the observer's phenomenal experience of oscillation between those representations (reversibility) permits the literature to be segregated into useful categories of research that expose overlapping but distinctive cortical processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Probabilities and health risks: a qualitative approach

Health risks, defined in terms of the probability that an individual will suffer a particular type of adverse health event within a given time period, can be understood as referencing either natural entities or complex patterns of belief which incorporate the observer's values and knowledge, the position adopted in the present paper. The subjectivity inherent in judgements about adversity and time frames can be easily recognised, but social scientists have tended to accept uncritically the objectivity of probability. Most commonly in health risk analysis, the term probability refers to rates established by induction, and so requires the definition of a numerator and denominator. Depending upon their specification, many probabilities may be reasonably postulated for the same event, and individuals may change their risks by deciding to seek or avoid information. These apparent absurdities can be understood if probability is conceptualised as the projection of expectation onto the external world. Probabilities based on induction from observed frequencies provide glimpses of the future at the price of acceptance of the simplifying heuristic that statistics derived from aggregate groups can be validly attributed to individuals within them. The paper illustrates four implications of this conceptualisation of probability with qualitative data from a variety of sources, particularly a study of genetic counselling for pregnant women in a U.K. hospital. Firstly, the official selection of a specific probability heuristic reflects organisational constraints and values as well as predictive optimisation. Secondly, professionals and service users must work to maintain the facticity of an established heuristic in the face of alternatives. Thirdly, individuals, both lay and professional, manage probabilistic information in ways which support their strategic objectives. Fourthly, predictively sub-optimum schema, for example the idea of AIDS as a gay plague, may be selected because they match prevailing social value systems.