Increased synchrony with increase of a low-threshold calcium conductance in a model thalamic network: a phase-shift mechanism

A computer model of a thalamic network was used in order to examine the effects of an isolated augmentation in a low-threshold calcium current. Such an isolated augmentation has been observed in the reticular thalamic (RE) nucleus of the genetic absence epilepsy rat from the Strasbourg (GAERS) model of absence epilepsy. An augmentation of the low-threshold calcium conductance in the RE neurons (gTs) of the model thalamic network was found to lead to an increase in the synchronized firing of the network. This supports the hypothesis that the isolated increase in gTs may be responsible for epileptic activity in the GAERS rat. The increase of gTs in the RE neurons led to a slight increase in the period of the isolated RE neuron firing. In contrast, the low-threshold spike of the RE neuron remained relatively unchanged by the increase of gTs. This suggests that the enhanced synchrony in the network was primarily due to a phase shift in the firing of the RE neurons with respect to the thalamocortical neurons. The ability of this phase-shift mechanism to lead to changes in synchrony was further examined using the model thalamic network. A similar increase in the period of RE neuron oscillations was obtained through an increase in the conductance of the calcium-mediated potassium channel. This change was once again found to increase synchronous firing in the network.     

A comparison of models for fusion of the auditory and visual sensors in speech perception

Though a large amount of psychological and physiological evidence of audio-visual integration in speech has been collected in the last 20 years, there is no agreement about the nature of the fusion process. We present the main experimental data, and describe the various models proposed in the literature, together with a number of studies in the field of automatic audiovisual speech recognition. We discuss these models in relation to general proposals arising from psychology in the field of intersensory interaction, or from the field of vision and robotics in the field of sensor fusion. Then we examine the characteristics of four main models, in the light of psychological data and formal properties, and we present the results of a modelling study on audio-visual recognition of French vowels in noise. We conclude in favor of the relative superiority of a model in which the auditory and visual inputs are projected and fused in a common representation space related to motor properties of speech objects, the fused representation being further classified for lexical access.     

The Old-Age Healthy Dependency Ratio in Europe

The aim of this study is to answer the question of whether improvements in the health of the elderly in European countries could compensate for population ageing on the supply side of the labour market. We propose a state-of-health-specific (additive) decomposition of the old-age dependency ratio into an old-age healthy dependency ratio and an old-age unhealthy dependency ratio in order to participate in a discussion of the significance of changes in population health to compensate for the ageing of the labour force. Applying the proposed indicators to the Eurostat's population projection for the years 2010-2050, and assuming there will be equal improvements in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy at birth, we discuss various scenarios concerning future of the European labour force. While improvements in population health are anticipated during the years 2010-2050, the growth in the number of elderly people in Europe may be expected to lead to a rise in both healthy and unhealthy dependency ratios. The healthy dependency ratio is, however, projected to make up the greater part of the old-age dependency ratio. In the European countries in 2006, the value of the old-age dependency ratio was 25. But in the year 2050, with a positive migration balance over the years 2010-2050, there would be 18 elderly people in poor health plus 34 in good health per 100 people in the current working age range of 15-64. In the scenarios developed in this study, we demonstrate that improvements in health and progress in preventing disability will not, by themselves, compensate for the ageing of the workforce. However, coupled with a positive migration balance, at the level and with the age structure assumed in the Eurostat's population projections, these developments could ease the effect of population ageing on the supply side of the European labour market.     

INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE ON CASE-BASED REASONING IN THE HEALTH SCIENCES

There has been an explosion of interest in health sciences applications of case-based reasoning (CBR), not only in the traditional CBR in medicine domain, but also in bioinformatics, enabling home health-care technologies, CBR integration, and synergies between CBR and knowledge discovery. This special issue features the best papers from the third workshop on CBR in the health sciences, held at ICCBR-05 in Madrid. It is the third in a series of exciting workshops, the first two of which were held at ICCBR-03, in Trondheim, Norway, and at ECCBR-04, in Madrid, Spain. The nine high-quality papers introduced here represent the research and experience of twenty-two authors working in eight different countries on a wide range of problems and projects. These papers illustrate some of the major trends of current research in CBR in the health sciences, and represent overall an excellent sample of the most recent advances of CBR in the health sciences.     

在结构与随机扰动下的大系统的稳定性

在本文中,我们给出了在结构与随机扰动下的动态大系统的稳定性分析,建立了这类大系统的依概率吸引性,依概率一致有界性,依概率大范围渐近稳定性,p吸引性,一致p有界性,和大范围渐近p稳定性的结论。这些结论的假设是由孤立子系统和与其联系的李亚普诺夫函数,受扰系统的结构和作用在子系统上的随机扰动表出的。     

关联规则挖掘技术研究进展*

为帮助人们深入研究关联规则挖掘技术,总结了关联规则的分类方法、评价方法以及相关技术的最新进展,特别是对关联规则的主要算法进行了详细的介绍,并探讨未来的发展方向。该研究比较系统全面,对将来进一步深入分析关联规则挖掘技术具有指导意义。     

Automata with Multivalued Input and Their Behavior in Random Environments

In the last quarter century, the interests of the investigators of automata have ranged over many problems, from algorithms for economical and reliable relay-type automata to abstract theory, including problems of representability of events in various automata. Among the many topics of that theory, much attention has recently been devoted to behavior of automata in competitive situations and games. The interest in these topics was stimulated by developments in physiology and psychology, by attempts to explain the development of purposeful behavior in animals and by the desire to simulate behavioral acts. Later, it was found that the results achieved in this field were useful in several complex control problems, in particular, the control of industrial plants, and this led to new problems in the theory. In this paper we shall sketch out an approach to the problem of behavior of automata in various situations (environments).     

The application of IT in organisations: Some trends and issues

Abstract

This paper describes some trends and issues in the application of information technology in organisations. Technology trends are outlined in the areas of computing power, telecommunications, networking, software and standards. Some trends in the applications of IT are described with respect to developments in information systems and office automation. Some differences in the likely role of IT in the industrialised and developing countries are discussed. The second half of the paper deals with issues in the management of IT applications in organisations, and issues are identified as being political, organisational and social in nature in addition to technical. A social systems framework is proposed for the analysis of these issues. Some specific IT issues are then discussed involving alternative stakeholder perspectives, the analysis of decision making processes, the process of consultation and communication and the organisational impacts of IT applications.     

Syntactic Positions of Prepositional Phrases in the History of Chinese: Using the Developing Sheffield Corpus of Chinese for Diachronic Linguistic Studies

This paper reports the completion of the first expansion phaseof the Sheffield Corpus of Chinese (SCC). We describe the majorimprovements we made in expanding the corpus. They involve thecoverage of time periods, choice of text types and categories,and selection of individual texts; the mark up scheme and theintegral search and analysis tool. We use the developing SCCto examine Li and Thompson's; (1974, 1975, 1976) controversialpostverbal predominance hypothesis for prepositional phrases(PPs) in Archaic Chinese and their word order change hypothesisfor PPs in general in the history of the Chinese language. Ourstudy provides no evidence for the postverbal predominance hypothesisfor PPs in Archaic Chinese and the word order change hypothesisfor PPs in general from postverbal in Archaic Chinese to preverbalin Modern Chinese. Our findings show that postverbal and preverbalPPs have been in coexistence and there have always been moreoccurrences of preverbal PPs than postverbal PPs in all thetime periods covered in the current SCC. Although use of somePPs declined in some time periods and use of others emergedin other time periods, there was never a predominant positionfor PPs in any time period in the history of Chinese. We showdifferences in the distribution of PPs in different time periodsand provide an account of the syntactic positions of PPs inthose time periods.     

Deflationary Regulation of Market Equilibrium

Deflation in economy is defined as a result of reduction of the amount of money in circulation by the Central Bank and the financial sector, which violated the equilibrium. The equilibrium can be restored by the market system in the process of regulating the production of goods through reduction in the number of employed in the production sector in the context of consumer demand. To restore the growth of production of goods and overcome deflationary period, the Central Bank, at the cost of capital employed in production, should establish the amount of money in circulation that ensures the necessary level of inflation. As a result, overcoming the deflation leads to a financial catastrophe with high unemployment and hyperinflation.     

Access to information in Europe

Developments in telecommunications, together with the availability of large collections of bibliographic references in computer-readable form, have produced a great change in access to scientific and technical information. Although the major information systems are in the USA, there is rapid development in Europe under the stimulus of the Commission of the European Communities' action plans in this area. Progress in the provision of information systems in Europe is described, and the problems that are still under consideration are discussed.     

A distributed deadlock detection and resolution algorithm and itscorrectness proof

The key idea of the algorithm is to let one transaction controller be in charge of all transactions in a set of interacting transactions. Two transactions are interacting if they are both interested in (accessing) the same resource. In addition, the controller is in charge of all the resources allocated to any of the transactions in the set. Having one controller in charge of all the transactions in a set of interacting transactions and all the resources allocated to them makes it easier to detect deadlocks and avoid them. The main problem dealt with is how a controller takes charge of another transaction when the transaction tries to access one of the resources currently in the control of the controller and how a controller releases a transaction back to its original controller when the transaction is no longer interested in any of the resources in which one or more of the other transactions are also interested. Communicating sequential processes (CSP) is used to code the algorithm. The correctness of the algorithm is proved in a semiformal manner     

Requirements for Computerized Patient Monitoring Systems

During the last decade, interest has increased in the use of computers in the delivery of health care services in the United States and Europe. One of the early applications of computers in clinical care was in intensive care units (ICU's) where computers were felt to be useful to nurses in monitoring the condition of these critically ill patients, and in alerting them to sudden changes in patient condition.     

Spatio-temporal distribution of rice phenology and cropping systems in the Mekong Delta with special reference to the seasonal water flow of the Mekong and Bassac rivers

Multi-temporal Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data was used to estimate the spatial distribution of heading date and rice-cropping system employed in the Mekong Delta relative to seasonal changes in water resources in 2002 and 2003. We improved a Wavelet-based Filter for determining Crop Phenology (WFCP) and developed a Wavelet-based Filter for evaluating the spatial distribution of Cropping Systems (WFCS) to the interpretation of MODIS time-series data to determine the spatial distribution of rice phenology and various rice-cropping systems from the seasonal Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) data. The findings correspond well the physical characteristics of the cropping system in the Mekong Delta, which have changed over time in response to localized and seasonal changes in water resources. One such example is the double-irrigated rice-cropping system commonly employed in the upper Mekong Delta in the dry season to avoid damage due to the subsequent floods. The shortage of suitable irrigation water and intrusion of saline water in the coastal regions during the dry season has constrained the practice dry-season cropping and has meant that the double- and single-rainfed rice-cropping systems are employed in the rainy season. A triple-irrigated rice-cropping system is used in the central part of the Mekong Delta which is located midway between the flood-prone and salinity intrusion areas. Analysis of annual changes in the rice cropping systems between 2002 and 2003 showed that the triple-cropped rice expanded to the flood- and salinity-intrusion areas. This expansion indicates that the implementation of measures to limit the extent of flooding and salinity intrusion by improved farming technologies and improvements in land management. The heading dates in the upper Mekong Delta in 2003 were earlier than in 2002 by approximately 20 to 30 days. The reasons for this would be due to decreased flood runoff in 2002 compared to 2001, and implementation of government policies regarding early sowing of dry-season crops. Subsequent analysis of the MODIS data confirmed that the spatial distribution of rice-cropping systems was closely related to seasonal changes in river runoff regime in the Mekong Delta.     

C++语言中函数参数传递方式的图示说明

学习C++语言中函数参数传递方式的关键是给出函数调用过程中内存各段内容的变化图示。本文针对C++语言中三种函数参数传递方式,辅以代码段内容图示和堆栈段内容图示,从机理上详细解释了函数参数的传递过程。实践表明,这种图示说明的方法在教学中取得了非常良好的效果。     

Methods of system development in Finland

Interest in the use of different methodologies, methods and tools for information systems analysis and design has been increasing for the last decade in Finland. This has resulted in the founding of a special interest group in systems analysis and design within the Finnish Data Procesing Association and in its making a survey of the methods and tools in use in Finland in 1980. This survey was in the form of a questionnaire mailed to the company members of the association. The results of the survey show a wide use of different tools in the design and implementation of information systems. In the analysis phase, there seems to be a need for more and better methods and tools. In 1980 several companies began to use new methodologies, methods and tools in the field; the most common are: the Swedish ISAC, Jackson's JSP, and the data dictionary.     

Desktop publishing in education

Abstract The term 'desktop publishing' has received much media coverage in recent months in both the commercial and educational press. School-based 'desktop publishing' packages are at the moment poor imitations of full-specification systems. This paper discusses the state of desktop publishing in education today and demonstrates the weaknesses of the systems available for use in the classroom. The skills required for desktop publishing are interrelated in a complex way and cannot be presented in a hierarchical fashion. A model of the functional processes involved is suggested in the paper and analysed in terms of the skills required.