A red code triggers an unintended approach motivation toward sweet ultra-processed foods: Possible implications for front-of-pack labels

Front-of-package labels (FOPL) are recommended to reduce consumer intake of ultra-processed food products (UPP). The multiple traffic-light label is one example of FOPL that indicates the content of target nutrients in products by displaying red (high), amber (medium), and/or green (low) color-coding. The red code may implicitly enhance sweetness perception and approach dispositions toward sweet UPP via cross-modal visual-taste interactions. We conducted two experiments to examine the possibility of contradictory influence of explicitly learned and implicit cross-modal associations on the emotional responses evoked by UPP pictures. In both experiments, we first explicitly associated the color codes with health-related meanings. In Experiment I (n = 78), a psychometric tool estimated the emotional responses (pleasantness and arousal ratings) evoked by UPP pictures when preceded by red, amber, or green color-codes. In Experiment II (n = 24), we recorded participants’ electrocortical brain activity to assess the early posterior negativity (EPN) component as an index of the emotional responses to UPP. The reported pleasantness (Experiment I) and the EPN amplitude (Experiment II) were greater for sweet UPP relative to salty UPP when primed with red codes but not when primed with green or amber. A red code increased positive emotions toward sweet UPP despite its explicit association with increased health-risks. Thus, the use of multiple traffic-lights might lead to an unintended implicit approach behavior toward sweet UPP. Designers, researchers, and policy makers may consider color-taste cross-modal associations when designing, testing, and applying FOPL.     

金刚石膜的计算机虚拟制备技术中的分子动力学模拟

综述了近年来金刚石薄膜形成过程的分子动力学（Molecular Dynamics，简称MD）模拟研究，详细地阐述了原子间相互作用势的选取，总结了不同沉积条件下MD的计算模型和几种典型情况下的模拟结果。研究表明：在原子尺度上，MD方法能较全面地提供有关膜生长的信息，对进一步了解金刚石膜形成的微观机制以及为细观层次仿真提供基本信息均具有重要意义。     

Electrochemical Aspects of Electroosmotic Dewatering of Clay Suspensions

An attempt is made to elucidate the electrochemical aspects of the electroosmotic dewatering (EOD) of clays as reported in some recent work, especially that on interrupted DC power electroosmotic dewatering published by Rabie, Mujumdar and Weber (2). These authors showed that the dewatering by EOD stops after the DC power has been on for several minutes or hours; on interruption of their power and on short-circuiting of the electrodes, conditions can be created again for some further dewatering by DC power EOD. This discovery, of Rabie et al. is interpreted as a fuel cell effect and it is shown that it affords clues to several other electrochemical strategies for the possible enhancement of the efficiency of the EOD by DC power.

Further, the open circuit potentials observed by Rabie et al. (2) on the interruption of DC power are given an electrochemical interpretation which leads to quantitative estimates in agreement with the experimental values.     

Neural components of social evaluation.

Evaluative responses appear to involve 2 seemingly distinct sets of processes: those that are automatically activated and others that are more consciously controlled. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the authors investigated the brain systems associated with automatic and controlled evaluative processing. Participants made either evaluative (good-bad) or nonevaluative (past-present) judgments about famous names. Greater amygdala activity was observed for names rated as "bad" relative to those rated as "good," regardless of whether the task directly involved an evaluative judgment (good-bad) or not (past-present). Good-bad judgments resulted in greater medial and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) activity than past-present judgments. Furthermore, there was greater ventrolateral PFC activity in good-bad judgments marked by greater ambivalence. Together, these findings indicate a neural distinction between processes engaged for automatic and controlled evaluation. Whereas automatic processes are sensitive to simple valence, controlled processes are sensitive to attitudinal complexity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A time aggregation approach to Markov decision processes

We propose a time aggregation approach for the solution of infinite horizon average cost Markov decision processes via policy iteration. In this approach, policy update is only carried out when the process visits a subset of the state space. As in state aggregation, this approach leads to a reduced state space, which may lead to a substantial reduction in computational and storage requirements, especially for problems with certain structural properties. However, in contrast to state aggregation, which generally results in an approximate model due to the loss of Markov property, time aggregation suffers no loss of accuracy, because the Markov property is preserved. Single sample path-based estimation algorithms are developed that allow the time aggregation approach to be implemented on-line for practical systems. Some numerical and simulation examples are presented to illustrate the ideas and potential computational savings.     

Semantic Transparency,Brain Monitoring and Evaluation of Hybrid Cognitive Architectures

In constructing hybrid systems, there is a need for a principled basis to determine the relative roles or functions of artificial neural network and symbolic approaches. The primary objective of the work to be reported is the construction of a conceptual and methodological framework that permits an iterative sequence in which a hybrid model predicts the basis of cognitive performance and an objective analysis of performance provides empirical data, evaluating (and thus constraining) the structure and processes of the model. In seeking a linkage between a hybrid model of cognition and human performance the concept of “semantic transparency” has been adopted, since it can be used in analyzing and describing both the chracteristics of a model of cognition and the processes underlying human performance. An overview of a specific, ”strong” hybrid architecture is presented. The characteristics of the virtual machines which compose it and the nature of their interaction are illustrated. An approach to the questions of evaluation is described based on empirical data obtained by brain monitoring of subjects during cognitive performance.     

Aluminum. II. Derivation of C v0from C p and comparison to C v0 calculated from anharmonic models

The specific heat at constant pressure, C _p, of aluminum measured by Ditmars, Plint, and Shukla has been reduced to the volume V ₀ appropriate for 0 K employing the Murnaghan equation. The C _v0 thus obtained is compared with the theoretical C _v0 calculated in the harmonic and the lowest-order anharmonic approximation from three different pseudopotentials (Harrison, Ashcroft, and Dagens-Rasolt-Taylor) as well as a phenomenological Morse potential. The higher-order ( ⁴) anharmonic contributions are calculated from the same nearest-neighbor Morse potential as in the lowest-order anharmonic theory. The role of the vacancy and the higher-order anharmonic contributions to C _v0 has been examined and we conclude that the ⁴ contributions to C _v0 are much smaller than the vacancy contribution. After removal of the vacancy contribution, the reduced C _v0 is found to be in excellent agreement with the Ashcroft and Harrison pseudopotentials as well as the Morse potential including the ² and ⁴ contributions to C _v0.     

基于运动相关皮层电位握力运动模式识别研究

面向基于脑-机接口（Brain-computer interface,BCI）的脑-机交互控制（Brain-machine interaction control,BMIC）——直接脑控机器人,提出一种新的左、右手握力运动参数范式,在该范式下探索左、右手握力运动相关皮层电位/运动相关电位（Movement-related potentials,MRPs）的时域特征表示并识别握力运动模式.在涉及左、右手4个不同任务的实验中采集了11个健康被试的脑电信号,任务期间要求被试以2种握力变化模式之一完成自愿握力运动,每种任务随机重复30次.不同握力任务之间具有显著差异的运动相关电位特征用于识别握力运动模式.分别用基于核的Fisher线性判别分析和支持向量机识别4个不同的握力运动任务.研究结果进一步证实运动相关电位可以表征握力运动规划、运动执行和运动监控的脑神经机制过程.基于核的Fisher线性判别分析和支持向量机分别获得24±4%和21±5%的平均错误分类率.最小误分类率是12%,所有被试平均最小误分类率为20.9±5%.与传统的仅仅识别参与运动的肢体类型以及识别单侧肢体运动参数的研究相比,本研究可望为脑-机交互控制/脑控机器人接口提供更多的力控制意图指令,奠定了后续的对比研究基础.     

Stochastic learning and optimization—A sensitivity-based approach

We introduce a sensitivity-based view to the area of learning and optimization of stochastic dynamic systems. We show that this sensitivity-based view provides a unified framework for many different disciplines in this area, including perturbation analysis, Markov decision processes, reinforcement learning, identification and adaptive control, and singular stochastic control; and that this unified framework applies to both the discrete event dynamic systems and continuous-time continuous-state systems. Many results in these disciplines can be simply derived and intuitively explained by using two performance sensitivity formulas. In addition, we show that this sensitivity-based view leads to new results and opens up new directions for future research. For example, the n th bias optimality of Markov processes has been established and the event-based optimization may be developed; this approach has computational and other advantages over the state-based approaches.