Lose Fat, Not Muscle: An Examination of Supervisor Reduction in Discrete-Event Systems

This paper is concerned with the elimination of unnecessary states in discrete-event system control agents. Several approaches to supervisor reduction are studied and a new relation between agents, comparability, is defined to encapsulate most of the concepts found in the aforementioned methods. This relation is also proven to be preserved under conjunction, which is commonly employed to determine the centralized representation of two decentralized DES supervisors.

Does oral experience terminate ingestion?

Using data from studies of ingestive behavior in developing rat pups we demonstrate how oral experience can contribute to the termination of ingestion. In rat pups, repeated oral stimulation with sweet solutions causes a decline in oral responsiveness. The diminished responsiveness is specific to the flavor of the stimulus experienced orally and can persist for several hours. We suggest that this experience-based decrement in responsiveness is best considered "oral habituation" and that oral habituation largely accounts for the onset of satiety. Post-ingestive feedback signals may have their influence through the oral habituation process or act in the context of oral habituation. Oral habituation is also shown to depend on the pattern of stimulus presentation, a phenomenon that adds considerable complexity to assessing the contributions of oral experience to satiety. The concept of oral habituation may be useful in understanding the immediate control of ingestion and the moment-to-moment expression of ingestive behavior in adult animals.     

Semantic constraints on word learning: proper names and adjectives

4 experiments examined 3- and 4-year-olds' interpretations of novel words applied to familial objects in the sentence frame, "This Y is X," where X is a novel word, and Y is a familiar basic-level count noun (e.g., "dog," "cup"). These novel words are ambiguous and could be interpreted either as proper names (e.g., "Fred") or as adjectives/mass nouns (e.g., "red"/"lead"). The experiments addressed 2 questions. First, do children appreciate that the words can be construed either as proper names referring to individuals or as adjectives/mass nouns referring to salient properties/material kinds? The results showed that children could easily make either interpretation. Second, what factors affect children's tendency to make either a proper name or an adjective/mass noun interpretation? In the experiments, children learned the novel words for a range of animals and artifacts. Most children who learned the words for typical pets (e.g., a bird) made proper name interpretations, as did the majority of those who learned the words for certain non-pet animals (e.g., a caterpillar) described as possessed by someone, but only about half of those who learned the words for such non-pet animals not so described. Very few children who learned the words for either simple (e.g., a shoe) or complex (e.g., a boat) artifacts made proper name interpretations. The results provide clear evidence of the role of semantic information in constraining children's interpretation of a novel word, and they help to refine an understanding of what counts as a nameable individual for preschoolers.     

The mating of a fly

Courtship in Drosophila is influenced by a wide variety of genes, in that many different kinds of pleiotropic mutations lead to defective courtship. This may seem to be a truism, but the broad temporal and spatial expression of most of the fly's "neuro genes" makes it difficult to exclude elements of such genes' actions as materially underlying reproductive behavior. "Courtship genes" that seem to play more particular roles were originally identified as sensory, learning, or rhythm mutations; their reproductive abnormalities have been especially informative for revealing components of male or female actions that might otherwise have gone unnoticed. Further behavioral mutations seemed originally to be courtship-specific, turned out not to have that property, and have led to a broadened perspective on the nature and action of Drosophila's sex-determination genes.     

Rigor, rigor mortis, and conspiratorial views of depression research.

The authors reassert the need for methodological changes in depression research appearing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and other personality and social psychology journals. In this rejoinder the authors update their earlier literature review (H. Tennen, J. Hall, & G. Affleck; see record 1995-31710-001) and respond to the commentaries by P C. Kendall and E. C. Flannery-Schroeder (see record 1995-31700-001) and G. Weary, J. A. Edwards, and J. A. Jacobson (see record 1995-31713-001). The authors notice that G. Weary et al.'s own findings demonstrate the need to change how depression is measured and participants are assigned to experimental groups. The authors also challenge G. Weary et al.'s contention that structured interviews are limited because they require interviewer judgments, and they urge personality and social psychologists to learn more about these interviews. Finally, G. Weary et al.'s suspicion that depression research guidelines reflect professional parochialism is disputed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

High Figure of Merit (FOM) of Bragg Modes in Au‐Coated Nanodisk Arrays for Plasmonic Sensing

Gold‐coated nanodisk arrays of nearly micron periodicity are reported that have high figure of merit (FOM) and sensitivity necessary for plasmonic refractometric sensing, with the added benefit of suitability for surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), large‐scale microfabrication using standard photolithographic techniques and a simple instrumental setup. Gold nanodisk arrays are covered with a gold layer to excite the Bragg modes (BM), which are the propagative surface plasmons localized by the diffraction from the disk array. This generates surface‐guided modes, localized as standing waves, leading to highly confined fields confirmed by a mapping of the SERS intensity and numerical simulations with 3D finite element method. The optimal gold‐coated nanodisk arrays are applied for refractometric sensing in transmission spectroscopy with better performance than nanohole arrays and they are integrated to a 96‐well plate reader for detection of IgY proteins in the nanometer range in PBS. The potential for sensing in biofluids is assessed with IgG detection in 1:1 diluted urine. The structure exhibits a high FOM of up to 46, exceeding the FOM of structures supporting surface plasmon polaritons and comparable to more complex nanostructures, demonstrating that subwavelength features are not necessary for high‐performance plasmonic sensing.