Telemetered heart rate and skin potential of a chronic schizophrenic patient especially during periods of hallucinations and periods of talking.

Took telemetric recordings of a male 23-yr-old chronic schizophrenic patient's heart rate and skin potential while on the ward. During periods of hallucinations, the skin potential increased significantly, while there were no changes in heart rate. Neither heart rate nor skin potential increased during periods of talking. When very angry, heart rate showed a substantial deceleration followed by a large increase. There was no change in skin potential during the period of anger. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predictability, control, and the pituitary-adrenal response in rats.

Compared the effects of signaled and unsignaled shock on the pituitary-adrenal response of 68 male Long-Evans hooded rats. In Exp I, exposure to the 2 procedures yielded no difference in plasma corticosterone levels. In Exp II, the addition of a food-reinforced leverpressing baseline produced conditioned suppression in the signaled condition but no group difference in steroid values. To guard against steroid elevations produced by exposure to shock, blood samples in Exp III were obtained during brief test sessions prior to the occurrence of shock. The procedure resulted in a significant elevation in the steroid levels of the signaled shock group. In Exp IV, a within-Ss sampling procedure revealed that disparate group steroid values obtained earlier in the session had converged by the end of the test session. The final experiment produced the original failure to obtain a steroid difference due to predictability in the absence of a behavioral baseline. Results suggest that (a) the effects of predictability are largely seen in the temporal pattern of steroid elevations and not in their terminal values, (b) the effects of predictability on steroids are modulated by the availability of control, and (c) control is not confined to the stimulus that is being predicted. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Nonlinear optical susceptibility of the thiogallate CdGa2S4

The nonlinear optical coefficient d36of CdGa2S4was measured to be 5 times larger than d31(LiNbO3). This large non-linearity is in good agreement with theory.     

Emerging Cooperation With Minimal Effort: Rewarding Over Mimicking

This paper compares supervised and unsupervised learning mechanisms for the emergence of cooperative multiagent spatial coordination using a top-down approach. By observing the global performance of a group of homogeneous agents-supported by a nonglobal knowledge of their environment-we attempt to extract information about the minimum size of the agent neurocontroller and the type of learning mechanism that collectively generate high-performing and robust behaviors with minimal computational effort. Consequently, a methodology for obtaining controllers of minimal size is introduced and a comparative study between supervised and unsupervised learning mechanisms for the generation of successful collective behaviors is presented. We have developed a prototype simulated world for our studies. This case study is primarily a computer games inspired world but its main features are also biologically plausible. The two specific tasks that the agents are tested in are the competing strategies of obstacle-avoidance and target-achievement. We demonstrate that cooperative behavior among agents, which is supported only by limited communication, appears to be necessary for the problem's efficient solution and that learning by rewarding the behavior of agent groups constitutes a more efficient and computationally preferred generic approach than supervised learning approaches in such complex multiagent worlds     

Is local colour normalization good enough for local appearance-based classification?

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of colour normalization techniques when they are applied to small image patches as opposed to the entire image. We evaluate five colour normalization techniques using three different local appearance-based classifiers. Our test sets allow us to independently examine the influence of illumination changes due to lighting colour and geometry. We demonstrate that local colour normalization can significantly improve the performance of a local appearance-based classifier. However, we observe that the effectiveness of local colour normalization depends on both the underlying classifier and the type of illumination variation.     

Response to Berkowitz:ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN BALTIMORE: Some Additional Perspectives

ABSTRACT: This article is written as a response to Bernard L Berkowitz's rejoinder appearing in the Journal of Urban Affairs, 9(2):125–132, to the author's article “Downtown Redevelopment as an Urban Growth Strategy: A Critical Appraisal of the Baltimore Renaissance,” appearing in the Journal of Urban Affairs, 9(2): 103–123.