Using visual reinforcement to establish stimulus control of responding of Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens).

Stimulus control of ring swimming was studied with male Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens) using 2-component multiple schedules in which the components were correlated with the presence or absence of air bubbles in the water. In Experiment 1, either response-independent mirror presentations or extinction was juxtaposed with immediate response-dependent mirror presentations. Rates of ring swimming generally were higher with immediate reinforcement than with either response-independent mirror presentations or extinction. In Experiment 2, different durations of response-dependent mirror presentations were juxtaposed. Generally, higher rates of ring swimming occurred with 15-s than with 0-, 1-, or 3-s durations. Results demonstrate that stimulus control of responding can be established with these fish under several conditions of differential reinforcement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A hemispheric division of labor aids mental rotation.

In the present study, we investigated whether a hemispheric division of labor is most advantageous to performance when lateralized inputs place unequal resource demands on the left and right cerebral hemispheres. In each trial, participants decided whether 2 rotated letters, presented either in the same visual field (within-field trials) or in opposite visual fields (across-field trials), were both of normal orientation, or whether one was normal and the other was mirror-reversed. To discriminate a letter's orientation, one must rotate the letter to the upright position. Therefore, we manipulated whether the two letters imposed similar or dissimilar demands on cognitive resources by varying the number of degrees that each letter needed to be rotated to reach the upright position. As predicted, in 2 experiments we found that the across-field advantage increased as the number of degrees each letter needed to be rotated became more dissimilar. These findings support a current model of hemispheric interactions, which posits that an unequal hemispheric distribution of cognitive load allows the cerebral hemispheres to take the lead for different aspects of cognitive processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical Influences in Audiovisual Speech Perception.

Phoneme identification with audiovisually discrepant stimuli is influenced hy information in the visual signal (the McGurk effect). Additionally, lexical status affects identification of auditorily presented phonemes. The present study tested for lexical influences on the McGurk effect. Participants identified phonemes in audiovisually discrepant stimuli in which lexical status of the auditory component and of a visually influenced percept was independently varied. Visually influenced (McGurk) responses were more frequent when they formed a word and when the auditory signal was a nonword (Experiment 1). Lexical effects were larger for slow than for fast responses (Experiment 2), as with auditory speech, and were replicated with stimuli matched on physical properties (Experiment 3). These results are consistent with models in which lexical processing of speech is modality independent. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Plasticity of feature-based selection in triple-conjunction search.

Two experiments examined the disruption of feature-based selection in triple-conjunction search at multiple target transfers. In Experiment 1, after 10 training sessions, a new target possessing previous distractor features was introduced. This produced disruption in RT and fixation number, but no disruption in feature-based selection. Specifically, there was a tendency to fixate objects sharing the target's contrast polarity and shape and this did not change even upon transfer to the new target. In Experiment 2, 30 training sessions were provided with three target transfers. At the first transfer, the results replicated Experiment 1. Subsequent transfers did not produce disruption on any measure. These findings are discussed in terms of strength theory, Guided Search, rule-based approaches to perceptual learning, and the area activation model. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Failures of retrieval and comparison constrain change detection in natural scenes.

In a change detection paradigm, a target object in a natural scene either rotated in depth, was replaced by another object token, or remained the same. Change detection performance was reliably higher when a target postcue allowed participants to restrict retrieval and comparison processes to the target object (Experiment 1). Change detection performance remained excellent when the target object was not attended at change (Experiment 2) and when a concurrent verbal working memory load minimized the possibility of verbal encoding. (Experiment 3). Together, these data demonstrate that visual representations accumulate in memory from attended objects as the eyes and attention are oriented within a scene and that change blindness derives, at least in part, from retrieval and comparison failure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integration of batching and scheduling for hot rolling production in the steel industry

This paper investigates the hot rolling production scheduling problem in the steel industry and proposes a new mixed integer programming model for this problem based on the monolithic modeling strategy that integrates batching and scheduling. Using this strategy, the new model can simultaneously schedule multiple turns and simultaneously determine the production timetable of these turns in a global optimal view. A long-term tabu search heuristic using frequency-based memory is developed to obtain near-optimal solutions for this problem. Three kinds of speed-up strategies are developed to accelerate the search procedure of the proposed tabu search. A practical scheduling system combining the proposed mathematical model and the tabu search heuristic has been developed and tested on instances collected from practical production data. The experimental results show that the proposed mathematical model and the tabu search heuristic outperform both the current manual scheduling method and the traditional serial method.     

空气钻井条件下录井工艺方法与技术配套探讨

针对玉门青西油田深部高陡易斜地层存在可钻性差、自然造斜能力强，致使钻井周期长、成本高等特点，中油集团公司在吐哈油田设立钻探“工程探索井（L14井）”重大科研项目，试验研究空气钻井技术。根据L14井录井的实际情况，首先分析了空气钻井条件对录井带来的影响和常规的录井工艺方法和技术设备存在的不足；从5个方面介绍了录井工艺、技术方法的改进，探讨了空气钻井下的岩屑上返理论；介绍了配置装备的改进，分析了该井录井配套技术的应用效果。从该试验井的录井效果看，经改进的录井工艺、方法及装备基本上能满足空气钻井的需要，取全取准了地质及工程资料，为地质解释和评价提供了可靠依据；在工程监测、保障施工安全方面，工程录井也发挥了作用。但综合录井仪软件及后台评价程序还不适应空气钻井的需要，相关的理论研究及工艺完善还有许多课题尚需深入。     

Perceptually Grounded Language Learning: Part 2—DETE: A Neural/Procedural Model

In Part 1 of this two-part series, we introduced Katamic memory—a neural network architecture capable of robust sequence learning and recognition. In Part 2, we introduce the Blobs World taskjdomain for language learning and describe the DETE language learning system, which is composed of over 50 Katamic memory modules. DETE currently learns small subsets of English and Spanish via association with perceptual! motor inputs. In addition to Kaiamic memory, DETE employs several other novel features: (1) use of feature planes, to encode visual shapes, spatial relationships and the motions of objects, (2) phase-locking of neural firing, in order to represent focus of atention and to bind objects across multiple feature planes, and (3) a method for encoding temporal relationships, so that DETE can learn utterances involving the immediate past and future. We compare DETE to related models and discuss the implications of this approach for language-learning research.     

基于神经网络的智能检索系统

文章首先概述了当前大多数的搜索引擎的主要的弊端；然后着重介绍了智能检索系统的运行基本思路和售用算法，以及该算法在检索领域中运用的优点；最后指出，神经网络运用在检索领域，可解决网络管理中的诸多难题。     

Intelligent scheduling with tabu search: An application to jobs with linear delay penalties and sequence-dependent setup costs and times

In this article we study thetabu search (TS) method in an application for solving an important class of scheduling problems. Tabu search is characterized by integrating artificial intelligence and optimization principles, with particular emphasis on exploiting flexible memory structures, to yield a highly effective solution procedure. We first discuss the problem of minimizing the sum of the setup costs and linear delay penalties when N jobs, arriving at time zero, are to be scheduled for sequential processing on a continuously available machine. A prototype TS method is developed for this problem using the common approach of exchanging the position of two jobs to transform one schedule into another. A more powerful method is then developed that employs insert moves in combination with swap moves to search the solution space. This method and the best parameters found for it during the preliminary experimentation with the prototype procedure are used to obtain solutions to a more complex problem that considers setup times in addition to setup costs. In this case, our procedure succeeded in finding optimal solutions to all problems for which these solutions are known and a better solution to a larger problem for which optimizing procedures exceeded a specified time limit (branch and bound) or reached a memory overflow (branch and bound/dynamic programming) before normal termination. These experiments confirm not only the effectiveness but also the robustness of the TS method, in terms of the solution quality obtained with a common set of parameter choices for two related but different problems.