Search results for "Reason"
showing 10 items of 526 documents
Diagrammatic Expansion for Positive Spectral Functions in the Steady-State Limit
2019
Recently, a method was presented for constructing self-energies within many-body perturbation theory that are guaranteed to produce a positive spectral function for equilibrium systems, by representing the self-energy as a product of half-diagrams on the forward and backward branches of the Keldysh contour. We derive an alternative half-diagram representation that is based on products of retarded diagrams. Our approach extends the method to systems out of equilibrium. When a steady-state limit exists, we show that our approach yields a positive definite spectral function in the frequency domain.
Interaction Capabilities of a Robotic Receptionist
2017
A system aimed at facilitating the interaction between a human user and an humanoid robot is presented. The system is suited to answer questions about laboratories activities, people involved, projects, research themes and collaborations among employees. The task is accomplished by the HermiT reasoner invoked by a speech recognition module. The system is capable of navigating a specific ontology making inference on it. The presented system is part of a broader social robot framework whose goal is to give the user a fulfilling social interaction experience, driven by the perception of the robot internal state and involving intuitive and computational creativity capabilities.
Are coastal communities able to pay for the protection of fish resources impacted by climate change?
2020
Abstract The purpose of this study is to examine inhabitants’ motivation and their willingness to pay to mitigate the impact of climate change on fish resources. Willingness to pay was tested empirically using survey data from 333 inhabitants of Sciacca, a fishing community in Sicily, Italy, which has the island’s second largest fishing fleet. People’s attitudes towards climate change, their degree of involvement in the issue, and their concerns about this phenomenon’s potential impact on the marine environment are the key factors affecting their willingness to pay. It was further found that respondents are willing to pay an average of €6.81 per month to support mitigation policies in the f…
Making Industrial Robots Smarter with Adaptive Reasoning and Autonomous Thinking for Real-Time Tasks in Dynamic Environments: A Case Study
2018
In order to extend the abilities of current robots in industrial applications towards more autonomous and flexible manufacturing, this work presents an integrated system comprising real-time sensing, path-planning and control of industrial robots to provide them with adaptive reasoning, autonomous thinking and environment interaction under dynamic and challenging conditions. The developed system consists of an intelligent motion planner for a 6 degrees-of-freedom robotic manipulator, which performs pick-and-place tasks according to an optimized path computed in real-time while avoiding a moving obstacle in the workspace. This moving obstacle is tracked by a sensing strategy based on ma-chin…
Smart sensing and adaptive reasoning for enabling industrial robots with interactive human-robot capabilities in dynamic environments — a case study
2019
Traditional industry is seeing an increasing demand for more autonomous and flexible manufacturing in unstructured settings, a shift away from the fixed, isolated workspaces where robots perform predefined actions repetitively. This work presents a case study in which a robotic manipulator, namely a KUKA KR90 R3100, is provided with smart sensing capabilities such as vision and adaptive reasoning for real-time collision avoidance and online path planning in dynamically-changing environments. A machine vision module based on low-cost cameras and color detection in the hue, saturation, value (HSV) space is developed to make the robot aware of its changing environment. Therefore, this vision a…
Amyloid in Alzheimer’s Disease: Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt?
2017
Recently failed antiamyloidogenic trials call for an objective reassessment of the dominating amyloid cascade hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Ongoing efforts focusing on amyloid β protein (Aβ), its deposition, and its removal need to be complemented by more intensive research in new directions. Those may either integrate amyloid pathology or will propose pathogenetic routes independent of Aβ in the search for the causes of AD.
Practicing logical reasoning through Drosophila segmentation gene mutants.
2021
Laboratory practical sessions are critical to scientific training in biology but usually fail to promote logical and hypothesis-driven reasoning and rely heavily on the teacher's instructions. This paper describes a 2-day laboratory practicum in which students prepare and analyze larval cuticle preparations of Drosophila segmentation gene mutant strains. Embryonic segmentation involves three major classes of genes according to their loss-of-function phenotypes: the establishment of broad regions by gap genes, the specification of the segments by the pair-rule genes, and the compartments within segments by the segment polarity genes. Students are asked to sort undefined segmentation mutants …
The Logical Intelligence Enhancement Program (LIEP) for the improvement of cognitive abilities. Premilinary findings
2021
The Logical Intelligence Enhancement Program (LIEP) is a program specifically addressed to students aging from 6 to 12. It consists of a series of exercises of different types (verbal inferences, understanding of graphs and tables, series of digits, etc.) and increasing difficulty, properly devised to activate and train the abilities of logical reasoning. Hopefully, such an enhancement should result in an improvement of academic achievements, especially in low proficiency learner students. Here we report on a study carried out on a large cohort of fifth-grade students. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of LIEP in improving students’ cognitive abilities and abstract reasoning.
Metaphors in the mirror: The influence of teaching metaphors in a medical education programme
2016
Medical students often face problems in using and understanding metaphors when communicating with a patient or reading a scientific paper. These figures of speech constitute an interpretative problem and students need key strategies to facilitate metaphor comprehension and disambiguation of meaning. This article examines how medical students' strategies of metaphor comprehension could be improved by specific teaching on metaphors using a Cognitive Linguistics approach. Medical students' ability to comprehend mirror neuron metaphors was assessed comparing the performance of students who did not receive any instruction about metaphoric extension strategies after a lesson on mirror neurons wit…
A dual process model to predict adolescents’ screen time and physical activity
2021
OBJECTIVE: Many adolescents report a lack of physical activity (PA) and excess screen time (ST). Psychological theories aiming to understand these behaviours typically focus on predictors of only one behaviour. Yet, behaviour enactment is often a choice between options. This study sought to examine predictors of PA and ST in a single model. Variables were drawn from dual process models, which portray behaviour as the outcome of deliberative and automatic processes. DESIGN: 411 Finnish vocational school students (age 17-19) completed a survey, comprising variables from the Reasoned Action Approach (RAA) and automaticity pertaining to PA and ST, and self-reported PA and ST four weeks later. M…