Search results for " applications."
showing 10 items of 4344 documents
Oxytocin Signaling as a Target to Block Social Defeat-Induced Increases in Drug Abuse Reward
2021
There is huge scientific interest in the neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) due to its putative capacity to modulate a wide spectrum of physiological and cognitive processes including motivation, learning, emotion, and the stress response. The present review seeks to increase the understanding of the role of OXT in an individual’s vulnerability or resilience with regard to developing a substance use disorder. It places specific attention on the role of social stress as a risk factor of addiction, and explores the hypothesis that OXT constitutes a homeostatic response to stress that buffers against its negative impact. For this purpose, the review summarizes preclinical and clinical literature rega…
Goals and guesses as reference points: a field experiment on student performance
2022
In this paper, we study overconfidence and goal-setting in academic performance, with and without monetary incentives. Students enrolled in a microeconomics course were offered the possibility of setting their own target grade before taking part in the final exam. They were also asked to guess their grade immediately after they had taken the exam (“post-diction”). In general, students overestimated their performance, both at the goal-setting and at the post-diction stages. Controlling for several sources of this bias (cognitive abilities, academic record and self-reported academic confidence), we find that the use of monetary rewards mitigates the overestimation of potential achievements an…
Toward the Understanding of the Photophysics and Photochemistry of 1-Nitronaphthalene under Solar Radiation: The First Theoretical Evidence of a Phot…
2015
1-Nitronaphthalene belongs to the class of nitrated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and constitutes an atmospheric pollutant commonly found in urban environments due to its production during incomplete combustions. On the basis of CASPT2//CASSCF quantum chemical calculations, the photophysics and photochemistry of the system under solar exposure have for the first time been studied. According to the characteristics of the incident radiation (either UVA or UVB, both present in the portion of the solar spectrum reaching the earth), a different excited state will be mainly populated. In both cases, the main decay path undertaken by the corresponding bright state leads to an efficient intersy…
Emerging Trends, Issues, and Challenges in Big Data and Its Implementation toward Future Smart Cities
2017
The articles in this special section focus on Big Data as it impacts future smart cities. The world is experiencing a period of extreme urbanization. Moreover, this process will continue, and the global urban population is expected to double by 2050. Smart city has been proposed to improve the efficiency of services and meet residents’ needs for better quality of life. Essentially, smart city integrates the Internet of Things and emerging communication technologies such as fifth generation (5G) solutions to manage the citys’ assets, including transportation systems, hospitals, water supply networks, waste management, and so on. Therefore, smart city is driving innovation and new technologie…
Modeling of female human body shapes for apparel design based on cross mean sets
2014
This paper is concerned with a method to build prototypes of human bodies that can be used for apparel design. One of the most important issues in the apparel development process is to define a sizing system to provide a good fitting for the majority of the population. Since anthropometric measures do not present the same linear growth with size in each dimension, it is very important to find a prototype that represents as accurately as possible each class in the sizing system. In this paper we propose a method based on the concept of random compact mean set to define prototypes in apparel design. From a cloud of 3D points obtained with a 3D scanner a solid that represents the human body is…
The effect of the Spanish Law of Political Parties (LPP) on the attitude of the Basque Country population towards ETA: A dynamic modelling approach
2013
Abstract In June 2002, the Spanish Government passed the “Law of Political Parties” (LPP) with the aim, among others, of preventing parties giving political support to terrorist organizations. This law affected the Basque nationalist party “Batasuna”, due to its proved relation with ETA. In this paper, taking data from the Euskobarometro (Basque Country survey) related to the attitude of the Basque population towards ETA, we propose a dynamic model for the pre-LPP scenario. This model will be extrapolated to the future in order to predict what would have happened to the attitude of the Basque population if the law had not been passed. These model predictions will be compared to post-LPP dat…
Open challenges in environmental data analysis and ecological complex systems (a)
2020
Abstract This letter focuses on open challenges in the fields of environmental data analysis and ecological complex systems. It highlights relations between research problems in stochastic population dynamics, machine learning and big data research, and statistical physics. Recent and current developments in statistical modeling of spatiotemporal data and in population dynamics are briefly reviewed. The presentation emphasizes stochastic fluctuations, including their statistical representation, data-based estimation, prediction, and impact on the physics of the underlying systems. Guided by the common thread of stochasticity, a deeper and improved understanding of environmental processes an…
A hybrid genetic algorithm with local search
2001
Abstract A hybrid genetic algorithm with internal local search was developed for optimisations involving continuous variables. The reproduction probabilities were enhanced using the fitness values obtained when a local method was applied to each individual in the population. These estimations are more realistic, since consider not the apparent but the hidden, latent quality of each individual. The information gathered in the local search was also used to build an auxiliary population recording the successfully enhanced individuals, which allowed to detect the convergence and self-adapt the search limits. The size of this auxiliary population was kept constant by a cluster analysis strategy.…
Intermediaries: bridges across the digital divide
2012
The challenge of bringing developing countries into the “information society” has been traditionally framed as bridging the digital divide. Meeting this challenge has predominantly been through technical solutions aimed at providing physical access to the Internet. Yet, other aspects of the divide such as low literacy rates, gender and religious issues arguably pose bigger hurdles in getting the benefits of the Internet to the vast majority of the population of developing countries. They are seldom aware of the information available on the net and even when they are, they have difficulty using it. To facilitate access and use of the Internet by the population, an intermediary is often neede…
A distributed visualization system for crowd simulations1
2011
The visualization system of large-scale crowd simulations should scale up with both the number of visuals views of the virtual world and the number of agents displayed in each visual. Otherwise, we could have large scale crowd simulations where only a small percentage of the population is displayed. Several approaches have been proposed in order to efficiently render crowds of animated characters. However, these approaches either render crowds animated with simple behaviors or they can only support a few hundreds of user-driven entities. In this paper, we propose a distributed visualization system for large crowds of autonomous agents that allows the visualization of crowds animated with co…