Processing of patent bibliographic data at chemical abstracts service

Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS) has been involved with chemical patent information from its beginning in 1907. Since then, the patent literature has undergone many changes and CAS has tried to respond to those changes to better meet the needs of its users for patent information. One significant advance has been the signing of a long-term agreement with the International Patent Documentation Center (INPADOC) for a backfile of computer-readable patent bibliographic data and weekly update tapes. The article discusses the events which led to the signing of the INPADOC agreement, the manner in which the INPADOC backfile and weekly tapes are used to select chemical documents and determine basics and equivalents, and the format of the new Patent Index, derived from the INPADOC data, which was introduced by CAS in January 1981.     

"Sticky Hands": learning and generalization for cooperative physical interactions with a humanoid robot

"Sticky Hands" is a physical game for two people involving gentle contact with the hands. The aim is to develop relaxed and elegant motion together, achieve physical sensitivity-improving reactions, and experience an interaction at an intimate yet comfortable level for spiritual development and physical relaxation. We developed a control system for a humanoid robot allowing it to play Sticky Hands with a human partner. We present a real implementation including a physical system, robot control, and a motion learning algorithm based on a generalizable intelligent system capable itself of generalizing observed trajectories' translation, orientation, scale and velocity to new data, operating with scalable speed and storage efficiency bounds, and coping with contact trajectories that evolve over time. Our robot control is capable of physical cooperation in a force domain, using minimal sensor input. We analyze robot-human interaction and relate characteristics of our motion learning algorithm with recorded motion profiles. We discuss our results in the context of realistic motion generation and present a theoretical discussion of stylistic and affective motion generation based on, and motivating cross-disciplinary research in computer graphics, human motion production and motion perception.     

Human Recovery of Shape from Profiles

A single profile of a solid object contains much information about the shape of the object. Viewing the changing profiles of a moving object provides even greater information about the shape of the object. Few computational models of this process have been applied to the human ability to recover the shape and motion of solid objects from their changing profiles. We propose a theory that relates measurable quantities of changing two-dimensional (2-D) profiles to structural properties of three-dimensional (3-D) surfaces in motion. The relevance of this theory to human perception is shown by relating theoretical predictions to existing psychophysical results as well as additional demonstrations of human recovery of shape from profiles.

     

Enheduanna – A Manifesto of Falling: first demonstration of a live brain-computer cinema performance with multi-brain BCI interaction for one performer and two audience members

The new commercial-grade Electroencephalography (EEG)-based Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) have led to a phenomenal development of applications across health, entertainment and the arts, while an increasing interest in multi-brain interaction has emerged. In the arts, there is already a number of works that involve the interaction of more than one participants with the use of EEG-based BCIs. However, the field of live brain-computer cinema and mixed-media performances is rather new, compared to installations and music performances that involve multi-brain BCIs. In this context, we present the particular challenges involved. We discuss Enheduanna – A Manifesto of Falling, the first demonstration of a live brain-computer cinema performance that enables the real-time brain-activity interaction of one performer and two audience members; and we take a cognitive perspective on the implementation of a new passive multi-brain EEG-based BCI system to realise our creative concept. This article also presents the preliminary results and future work.     

Gender Recognition From Point-Light Walkers.

Point-light displays of human gait provide information sufficient to recognize the gender of a walker and are taken as evidence of the exquisite tuning of the visual system to biological motion. The authors revisit this topic with the goals of quantifying human efficiency at gender recognition. To achieve this, the authors first derive an ideal observer for gender recognition on the basis of center of moment (J. E. Cutting, D. R. Proffitt, & L. T. Kozlowski, 1978) and, with the use of anthropometric data from various populations, show optimal recognition of ～79% correct. Next, they perform a meta-analysis of 21 experiments examining gender recognition, obtaining accuracies of 66% correct for a side view and 71% for other views. Finally, results of the meta-analysis and the ideal observer are combined to obtain estimates of human efficiency at gender recognition of 26% for the side view and 47% for other views. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A small animal model of non-ischemic cardiomyopathy and its evaluation by transthoracic echocardiography

BACKGROUND: Cyclosporine is a potent immunosuppressant know to selectively suppress specific cytochrome P450 (P450) isoforms following chronic therapy in the rat. Cyclosporine undergoes significant hepatic metabolism in the rat, primarily due to P450 3A isoforms. Hence, alterations in hepatic metabolism of cyclosporine may lead to changes in drug pharmacokinetics or pharmacodynamics. The purpose of this study was to examine the temporal effect of chronic cyclosporine dosing on P450 protein expression and metabolic activity in a rat model of chronic cyclosporine nephropathy. METHODS: Adult male rats were administered cyclosporine 15 mg/kg/day or vehicle 1 ml/kg/day by subcutaneous injection for up to 28 days. To examine whether or not metabolic activity recovered following drug removal, additional rats were administered cyclosporine for 28 days followed by vehicle for up to an additional 15 days. Hepatic P450 protein expression and microsomal metabolic activity were measured by Western blot analysis and in vitro steroid hydroxylation, respectively. RESULTS: Cyclosporine trough levels progressively increased over the 28 days period and were still measurable for up to 15 days after discontinuation. Immunoblot analysis indicated that chronic cyclosporine treatment suppressed P450 3A2 expression and in vitro steroid hydroxylation in a time-dependent manner. Fifteen days following discontinuation of cyclosporine dosing, hepatic metabolic activity and microsomal P450 3A2 levels returned to near pre-dosing levels. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that the time-dependent P450 suppression by cyclosporine may at least partially explain the variability in cyclosporine pharmacokinetics. These studies support the hypothesis that hepatic isoforms other than P450 3A2 may be responsible for cyclosporine metabolism during chronic treatment in the rat.     

Virtual surfaces and the influence of cues to surface shape on grasp

This research compared grasps to real surfaces with grasps to virtual surfaces, and used virtual surfaces to examine the role of cues to surface shape in grasp. The first experiment investigated the kinematics of overhand grasps to real and virtual objects. The results showed that, compared with grasps to real surfaces, grasps to virtual objects were different in the deceleration phase of the grasp movement and were more variable in their endpoint position. The second experiment used several measures to examine the relationship between the visual perception of a surface and the decision to grasp the surface with either an over-or underhand grasp. It was found that visual perception of the surface was consistent with the grasping decision. The third experiment used virtual surfaces to examine how the removal of visual cues to shape affected the decision to switch from over- to underhand grasp. Results showed that the orientation at which the decision switched was dependent on the visual information content. Overall, the results showed that subtle differences existed between the reach to grasp movements towards real and virtual surfaces and that the decision to choose between grasp types was dependent on the visual information used to depict the virtual surface. These results are discussed in relation to the design and use of input devices to enable manipulation of three-dimensional objects in virtual worlds.     

Correspondence in pictorial space

Brain damage sometimes impairs recognition of living things relative to nonliving things. One interpretation of this dissociation is that recognition of living things depends on specialized mechanisms not used for the recognition of nonliving things; another is that patients have damage to a general purpose system, and recognition of living things taxes this system more heavily. Farah et al., (Neuropsychologia, Vol. 29, pp. 185-193, 1991 [7]) found that a set of general factors did not account for patients' impaired recognition of living things; thus they favored the specialized mechanisms account. The current paper builds on Ref. [7] in two ways. First, other research suggests a number of additional factors that might account for the results in Ref. [7] but were not tested there. Second, statistical methods in Ref. [7] may have implicitly favored the conclusion obtained there, so we use more conservative methods. The current work accounts for all these things, and finds that recognition of living things is still disproportionately impaired.