What is "special" about face perception?

There is growing evidence that face recognition is "special" but less certainty concerning the way in which it is special. The authors review and compare previous proposals and their own more recent hypothesis, that faces are recognized "holistically" (i.e., using relatively less part decomposition than other types of objects). This hypothesis, which can account for a variety of data from experiments on face memory, was tested with 4 new experiments on face perception. A selective attention paradigm and a masking paradigm were used to compare the perception of faces with the perception of inverted faces, words, and houses. Evidence was found of relatively less part-based shape representation for faces. The literatures on machine vision and single unit recording in monkey temporal cortex are also reviewed for converging evidence on face representation. The neuropsychological literature is reviewed for-evidence on the question of whether face representation differs in degree or kind from the representation of other types of objects.     

Legal issues in sharing the benefits of biodiversity prospecting

The National Cancer Institute (NCI) is the US Government's principal agency for research on the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. A critical component of the Institute's mission is the identification and development of new and promising treatments for cancer and AIDS. For many years these efforts have included a program to investigate natural products for potential new therapeutic agents. In 1986, with the advent of new screening techniques, the National Cancer Institute stepped up its exploration of natural products and began world-wide collections of plants in tropical and subtropical regions. In recognition of the principles of the Biodiversity Treaty, NCI appreciates that continued access to the natural products of these countries depends on the Institute's ability to recognize the contributions of these source countries and their indigenous peoples, and to provide them adequate incentives to conserve their natural resources for the purposes of drug discovery. Accomplishing this goal presented several legal issues for the National Cancer Institute. As an agency of the US government, the NCI has an adjunct statutory mission to facilitate the transfer of technology developed through the Institute's programs into the private sector for further development and commercialization, and NCI operates under a national policy to use the patent system to transfer Federally supported research to the private domestic sector. Reliance on patent law may limit the Institute's ability to recognize the rights of source countries and their indigenous people and provide compensation for their contributions. However, other legal instruments, such as contracts, can serve as interim measures to provide compensation to source countries and indigenous populations. The National Cancer Institute's Letter of Collection agreement (LOC, formerly the "Letter of Intent'), is an example of an alternative means that "fills-in the gaps' created by patent law and through which source countries may share in the benefits of natural product development.     

M/M/1 retrial queue with working vacations

In this paper we introduce the new M/M/1 retrial queue with working vacations which is motivated by the performance analysis of a Media Access Control function in wireless systems. We give a condition for the stability of the model, which has an important impact on setting the retrial rate for such systems. We derive the closed form solution in equilibrium for the retrial M/M/1 queue with working vacations, and we also show that the conditional stochastic decomposition holds for this model as well.     

The musculoskeletal system complaints of office workers at a vehicle production factory

This study aimed to determine the prevalence of and factors contributing to musculoskeletal system complaints (MSC) in office workers of a vehicle production factory and absenteeism due to these complaints. A total of 86.2% (n = 333) of the workers completed the survey. Of the workers, 73 (21.9%) were women, and 260 (78.1%) were men, and the mean age was 36.9 ± 8.75 years. The majority of the personnel had more than one symptom with a prevalence of 80.8%. The most frequently observed discomfort was tension and pain in the back muscles (58.6%) and in the neck muscles (58.3%), followed by low back pain (41%) and shoulder pain (30.3%). Pain in the shoulders, neck, and the back and pain and numbness in the fingers were statistically significantly more prevalent in employees who spent more than 5 hours per day performing desk work. Furthermore, all of the complaints, excluding pain in the elbows and knees, were statistically significantly more common in the women. When each complaint and the effects of contributing risk factors were analyzed by logistic regression analysis, pain in the shoulders, neck, and back; pain that spread to the arms; and pain in the fingers were correlated with longer work hours and the female gender (p < 0.05). The number of employees who had used sick leave within the past year due to MSCs was 11.7%. In conclusion, duration of work hours, frequency of breaks, and gender were determined as the most important risk factors in computer users regarding MSCs. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Application of neural processing paradigm in visual landmark recognition and autonomous robot navigation

This article addresses the issue of visual landmark recognition in autonomous robot navigation along known routes, by intuitively exploiting the functions of the human visual system and its navigational ability. A feedforward–feedbackward architecture has been developed for recognising visual landmarks in real time. It integrates the theoretical concepts from the pre-attentive and attentive stages in the human visual system, the selective attention adaptive resonance theory neural network and its derivatives, and computational approaches towards object recognition in computer vision. The architecture mimics the pre-attentive and attentive stages in the context of object recognition, embedding neural network processing paradigm into a computational template-matching approach in computer vision. The real-time landmark recognition capability is achieved by mimicking the pre-attentive stage, where it models a selective attention mechanism for optimal computational resource allocation, focusing only on the regions of interest to address the computational restrictive nature of current computer processing power. Similarly, the recognition of visual landmarks in both clean and cluttered backgrounds is implemented in the attentive stage by developing a memory feedback modulation (MFM) mechanism that enables knowledge from the memory to interact and enhance the efficiency of earlier stages in the architecture. Furthermore, it also incorporates both top-down and bottom-up facilitatory and inhibition pathways between the memory and the earlier stages to enable the architecture to recognise a 2D landmark, which is partially occluded by adjacent features in the surroundings. The results show that the architecture is able to recognise objects in cluttered backgrounds using real-images in both indoor and outdoor scenes. Furthermore, the architecture application in autonomous robot navigation has been demonstrated through a number of real-time trials in both indoor and outdoor environments.     

Optimization of forging processes using Finite Element simulations

During the last decades, simulation software based on the Finite Element Method (FEM) has significantly contributed to the design of feasible forming processes. Coupling FEM to mathematical optimization algorithms offers a promising opportunity to design optimal metal forming processes rather than just feasible ones. In this paper Sequential Approximate Optimization (SAO) for optimizing forging processes is discussed. The algorithm incorporates time-consuming nonlinear FEM simulations. Three variants of the SAO algorithm—which differ by their sequential improvement strategies—have been investigated and compared to other optimization algorithms by application to two forging processes. The other algorithms taken into account are two iterative algorithms (BFGS and SCPIP) and a Metamodel Assisted Evolutionary Strategy (MAES). It is essential for sequential approximate optimization algorithms to implement an improvement strategy that uses as much information obtained during previous iterations as possible. If such a sequential improvement strategy is used, SAO provides a very efficient algorithm to optimize forging processes using time-consuming FEM simulations.     

Maskless writing of microfluidics: Rapid prototyping of 3D microfluidics using scratch on a polymer substrate

We present a new rapid prototyping method designed for simple fabrication of 3D microfluidics using a maskless direct writing technique on polymer substrates. The entire process is enabled by a commercial cutter plotter with 10 μm resolution precision and high speed. A CAD design of top and bottom microstructures is directly written on a polymer substrate using a cutter plotter after setting up the suitable force. The smallest channel width of 20 μm was obtained with the minimum force and 100 μm from the maximum. Also the written depth increased linearly with force from 30 to 130 μm. Several 3D microfluidic devices are demonstrated using a maskless writing technique. The entire fabrication process from CAD layout to a final 3D device can be completed in 30 min outside the clean room facilities.     

Multiwalled carbon nanotubes grafted chitosan nanobiocomposite: A prosperous functional nanomaterials for glucose biosensor application

Multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) grafted chitosan (CS) nanowire (NW) was prepared by phase separation method. Glucose oxidase (GOx) was sequentially immobilized into MWNT-CS-NW to obtain MWNT-CS-NW/GOx biosensor. Field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) images of MWNT-CS-NW/GOx reveals the existence of MWNT and CS. Cyclic voltammetry and amperometry were used to evaluate the electrochemical determination of glucose. The MWNT-CS-NW/GOx biosensor shows an excellent performance for glucose at +0.34 V with a high sensitivity (5.03 μA/mM) and lower response time (3 s) in a wide concentration range of 1-10 mM (correlation coefficient of 0.9988). In addition, MWNT-CS-NW/GOx biosensor possesses better reproducibility, storage stability and there is negligible interference from other electroactive components.