Search results for "Modula"
showing 10 items of 1481 documents
New emerging potentials for human Wharton's jelly mesenchymal stem cells: immunological features and hepatocyte-like differentiative capacity.
2010
In recent years, human mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) have been extensively studied. Their key characteristics of long-term self-renewal and a capacity to differentiate into diverse mature tissues favour their use in regenerative medicine applications. Stem cells can be found in embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues as well as in adult organs. Several reports indicate that cells of Wharton's jelly (WJ), the main component of umbilical cord extracellular matrix, are multipotent stem cells, expressing markers of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BM-MSC), and giving rise to different cellular types of both connective and nervous tissues. Wharton's jelly mesenchymal stem cells (WJ-MSC) express …
A Cognitive Model of Trust for Biological and Artificial Humanoid Robots
2018
Abstract This paper presents a model of trust for biological and artificial humanoid robots and agents as antecedent condition of interaction. We discuss the cognitive engines of social perception that accounts for the units on which agents operate and the rules they follow when they bestow trust and assess trustworthiness. We propose that this structural information is the domain of the model. The model represents it in terms of modular cognitive structures connected by a parallel architecture. Finally we give a preliminary formalization of the model in the mathematical framework of the I/O automata for future computational and human-humanoid application.
Default Semantics and the architecture of the mind
2011
In this paper, I explore the relationship between Relevance Theory and Jaszczolt's Default Semantics, framing this debate within the picture of massive modularity tempered by the idea of brain plasticity (Perkins, 2007). While Relevance Theory focuses on processing (see cognitive efforts and contextual effects interplay), Default Semantics focuses on types of sources from which addressees draw information and types of processes that interact in providing it. In particular, I argue that Relevance Theory interacts with default semantics by standardizing inferences which are ultimately compressed (to use a term by Bach, 1998) into a default semantics. I briefly discuss potential obstacles to t…
What Can Modularity of Mind Tell Us about the Semantics/Pragmatics Debate?
2010
In this paper I make connections between two domains of information, research on the semantics/pragmatics debate and on modularity of mind, in the hope that establishing connections and parallel structure may be fruitful in deepening knowledge of the interface between semantics and pragmatics. In particular I want to inquire if modularity of mind can help us move towards the resolution of important theoretical problems like Grice's circle, the cancellability of explicatures/implicatures, the analogy between perceptual enrichments and explicatures due to free enrichments, the routing problem for explicatures (do they strictly take input from implicatures?), and satisficing strategies in prag…
Recognition of familiarity on the basis of howls: a playback experiment in a captive group of wolves
2015
Playback experiments were conducted with a pack of captive Iberian wolves. We used a habituation–discrimination paradigm to test wolves’ ability to discriminate howls based on: (1) artificial manipulation of acoustic parameters of howls and (2) the identity of howling individuals. Manipulations in fundamental frequency and frequency modulation within the natural range of intra-individual howl variation did not elicit dishabituation, while manipulation of modulation pattern did produce dishabituation. With respect to identity, across trials wolves habituated to unfamiliar howls by a familiar wolf (i.e., no direct contact, but previous exposure to howls by this wolf), but not to unfamiliar ho…
Progressive effect of beta amyloid peptides accumulation on CA1 pyramidal neurons: a model study suggesting possible treatments
2012
Several independent studies show that accumulation of β-amyloid (Aβ) peptides, one of the characteristic hallmark of Alzheimer's Disease (AD), can affect normal neuronal activity in different ways. However, in spite of intense experimental work to explain the possible underlying mechanisms of action, a comprehensive and congruent understanding is still lacking. Part of the problem might be the opposite ways in which Aβ have been experimentally found to affect the normal activity of a neuron; for example, making a neuron more excitable (by reducing the A- or DR-type K(+) currents) or less excitable (by reducing synaptic transmission and Na(+) current). The overall picture is therefore confus…
Analysis of HMAX Algorithm on Black Bar Image Dataset
2020
An accurate detection and classification of scenes and objects is essential for interacting with the world, both for living beings and for artificial systems. To reproduce this ability, which is so effective in the animal world, numerous computational models have been proposed, frequently based on bioinspired, computational structures. Among these, Hierarchical Max-pooling (HMAX) is probably one of the most important models. HMAX is a recognition model, mimicking the structures and functions of the primate visual cortex. HMAX has already proven its effectiveness and versatility. Nevertheless, its computational structure presents some criticalities, whose impact on the results has never been…
Analyzing the performance of a cluster-based architecture for immersive visualization systems
2008
Cluster computing has become an essential issue for designing immersive visualization systems. This paradigm employs scalable clusters of commodity computers with much lower costs than would be possible with the high-end, shared memory computers that have been traditionally used for virtual reality purposes. This change in the design of virtual reality systems has caused some development environments oriented toward shared memory computing to require modifications to their internal architectures in order to support cluster computing. This is the case of VR Juggler, which is considered one of the most important virtual reality application development frameworks based on open source code. Thi…
Modular Strategies for Recursive Game Graphs
2006
AbstractMany problems in formal verification and program analysis can be formalized as computing winning strategies for two-player games on graphs. In this paper, we focus on solving games in recursive game graphs which can model the control flow in sequential programs with recursive procedure calls. While such games can be viewed as the pushdown games studied in the literature, the natural notion of winning in our framework requires the strategies to be modular with only local memory; that is, resolution of choices within a module does not depend on the context in which the module is invoked, but only on the history within the current invocation of the module. While reachability in (global…
Complex group algebras of finite groups: Brauer’s Problem 1
2005
Brauer’s Problem 1 asks the following: what are the possible complex group algebras of finite groups? It seems that with the present knowledge of representation theory it is not possible to settle this question. The goal of this paper is to announce a partial solution to this problem. We conjecture that if the complex group algebra of a finite group does not have more than a fixed number m m of isomorphic summands, then its dimension is bounded in terms of m m . We prove that this is true for every finite group if it is true for the symmetric groups.