Emotional empathy transition patterns from human brain responses in interactive communication situations

The paper reports our research aiming at utilization of human interactive communication modeling principles in application to a novel interaction paradigm designed for brain–computer/machine-interfacing (BCI/BMI) technologies as well as for socially aware intelligent environments or communication support systems. Automatic procedures for human affective responses or emotional states estimation are still a hot topic of contemporary research. We propose to utilize human brain and bodily physiological responses for affective/emotional as well as communicative interactivity estimation, which potentially could be used in the future for human–machine/environment interaction design. As a test platform for such an intelligent human–machine communication application, an emotional stimuli paradigm was chosen to evaluate brain responses to various affective stimuli in an emotional empathy mode. Videos with moving faces expressing various emotional displays as well as speech stimuli with similarly emotionally articulated sentences are presented to the subjects in order to further analyze different affective responses. From information processing point of view, several challenges with multimodal signal conditioning and stimuli dynamic response extraction in time frequency domain are addressed. Emotions play an important role in human daily life and human-to-human communication. This is why involvement of affective stimuli principles to human–machine communication or machine-mediated communication with utilization of multichannel neurophysiological and periphery physiological signals monitoring techniques, allowing real-time subjective brain responses evaluation, is discussed. We present our preliminary results and discuss potential applications of brain/body affective responses estimation for future interactive/smart environments.     

The regionalization of medicalized vernacular names of medicinal plants in Brazil

In the last three decades, several vernacular names of medicinal plants related to manufactured drugs names have been recognized in ethnobotanical surveys throughout Brazil. The medicalization may be the primarily responsible process for the rise of that type of vernacular names of Brazilian medicinal plants differentially for each geopolitical region of Brazil. We attempt to trace the regionalization of medicalization on vernacular names of medicinal plants through ethnobotanical studies carried out in Brazil since the 1980s. Articles were consulted in nine journals published between 1980 and 2014. Richness estimation by Jackknife 1 and correspondence analysis by contingency tables were performed, both by the occurrence of medicalized names collected in the surveys for each region. The South region presented the highest number of reported and estimated medicalized names, in addition to present the highest number of medicalized names in exclusive occurrence. Northeast and Southeast regions presented a great similarity of medicalized names probably due to the migration flows occurring in both regions over the twentieth century.     

An OpenCL-based feature matcher

Nowadays visual search is one of the most active branches of computer vision. It relies on finding invariant points inside images, describing them into features and then matching these features against a reference database to identify objects in the scene or the entire photo (environment). In this paper, we discuss an approach to feature matching that exploits the capabilities of modern GPUs to speed up the aforementioned and that keeps low the number of false matches.     

Comparison of Vehicle Control Systems Based on Multiple Features

In striving to achieve autonomous navigation, the guidance system plays an essential role. In this article, the authors present two recently developed vision-based methods to estimate the heading angle of the vehicle. The authors propose a real-time guidance application based on edge and color information using an omnidirectional image. First, line segments were extracted. Second, the Random Sample Consensus (RANSAC) curve fitting method was implemented. Third, the set of intersection points for each pair of curves was extracted. Finally, by implementing the Density Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN) algorithms, the heading angle was computed. The main contribution of this work is in the evaluation of the methods applied, which included the “edge-based extraction in road scenes” method, which uses the spatial density information around the vehicle (curbs, barrier, gutters, side strip areas), and the “edge-based lane marking segmentation.” Both of these methods were evaluated in terms of the performance assessment of the length of the line segments in relation to the heading angle measurement. In that sense, the experiments were conducted for the purpose of testing the processing time and the number of extracted line segments. The preliminary results were gathered and tested on a group of consecutive frames to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods.     

Acyl-CoA Binding Protein Gene Ablation Induces Pre-implantation Embryonic Lethality in Mice

Unique among the intracellular lipid binding proteins, acyl-CoA binding protein (ACBP) exclusively binds long-chain fatty acyl-CoAs (LCFA-CoAs). To test if ACBP is an essential protein in mammals, the ACBP gene was ablated by homologous recombination in mice. While ACBP heterozygotes appeared phenotypically normal, intercrossing of the heterozygotes did not produce any live homozygous deficient (null) ACBP^(−/−) pups. Heterozygous and wild type embryos were detected at all post-implantation stages, but no homozygous ACBP-null embryos were obtained—suggesting that an embryonic lethality occurred at a pre-implantation stage of development, or that embryos never formed. While ACBP-null embryos were not detected at any blastocyst stage, ACBP-null embryos were detected at the morula (8-cell), cleavage (2-cell), and zygote (1-cell) pre-implantation stages. Two other LCFA-CoA binding proteins, sterol carrier protein-2 (SCP-2) and sterol carrier protein-x (SCP-x) were significantly upregulated at these stages. These findings demonstrate for the first time that ACBP is an essential protein required for embryonic development and its loss of function may be initially compensated by concomitant upregulation of two other LCFA-CoA binding proteins, but only at the earliest pre-implantation stages. The fact that ACBP is the first known intracellular lipid binding protein whose deletion results in embryonic lethality suggests its vital importance in mammals.     

The synthesis and microwave dielectric properties of Mg3B2O6 and Mg2B2O5 ceramics

Single-phase Mg₃B₂O₆ and Mg₂B₂O₅ ceramics were synthesized and then structurally and dielectrically characterized. The highest Qxf value of 230,900 GHz was obtained for a Mg₃B₂O₆ ceramic with a density of 97% and 1000-μm grains. Considerably lower Qxf values (10,000–32,000 GHz) were determined for the Mg₂B₂O₅ ceramic. Mg₃B₂O₆ and Mg₂B₂O₅ exhibited permittivities (?) of 7.2 and 6.2–7.0, respectively. Both ceramics showed negative temperature coefficients of resonant frequency (τ_f) of ?18 to ?45 ppm/°C.     

Dielectric Properties of the Bi(1.6−0.8x)YxTi2O(6.4+0.3x) (0.03<x<2) Pyrochlore Solid Solution

We have studied the dielectric properties of a new, cubic pyrochlore-type solid solution Bi_{(1.6−0.8 x )}Y _x Ti₂O_{(6.4+0.3 x )} (0.03< x <2). The single-phase nature of the pyrochlore solid solution was determined using X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. We found that at room temperature and 1 MHz the pyrochlore solid solution exhibited values of the dielectric constant ɛ between 127 and 64, and low dielectric losses, tan δ, of <6 × 10⁻³. The temperature coefficient of the dielectric constant τ_k is, however, strongly dependent on the composition. Below room temperature dielectric relaxation phenomena were observed for the compositions with low x values.     

Sub-Solidus Synthesis and Microwave Dielectric Characterization of Plagioclase Feldspars

Na _x Ca_{1− x} Al_{2− x} Si_{2+ x} O₈ plagioclase solid solutions (0≤ x ≤1) were synthesized under sub-solidus conditions using a solid-state reaction technique. The plagioclase formation and the sintering temperature decreased with an increase in x from the anorthite (CaAl₂Si₂O₈; x =0) to the albite (NaAlSi₃O₈; x =1).
Microwave (MW) dielectric measurements revealed that slow-cooled ( P 1 ) anorthite exhibited higher Q × f values than fast-cooled ( I 1 ) anorthite. Slow cooling also considerably improved the Q × f values of the sodium-rich Na _x Ca_{1− x} Al_{2− x} Si_{2+ x} O₈ solid solutions (0.8≤ x ≤1), where the highest Q × f value of 17 600 GHz was obtained for slow-cooled Na_0.8Ca_0.2Al_1.2Si_2.8O₈. The temperature coefficient of resonant frequency (τ_f) approached zero for 0.8≤ x ≤1.     

Control of planktonic and sessile bacterial cells by essential oils

The antibacterial potential of essential oils (EOs) from Cinnamomum cassia bark and Melaleuca alternifolia and Cymbopogon flexuosus leaves was evaluated against planktonic and sessile cells of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) and Listeria monocytogenes. The EOs were tested singly and in different combinations of equal percentages: mixtures of two (1:1 in v/v) and three EOs (1:1:1 in v/v/v). The minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) were determined against planktonic cells and the anti-biofilm activity was verified against bacterial cells adhered in the wells of polystyrene microplates. These initial tests indicated the EO of C. cassia as a potential anti-biofilm agent, and their effect was studied against sessile cells of biofilms formed on stainless steel surface under agitation and static conditions. For both bacterial species, a solution containing 2% (v/v) of C. cassia EO was effective against the biofilm formed under static conditions, because the counts obtained were below the detection level of the plate count method employed. Although the biofilm of L. monocytogenes showed a decreased number of adhered cells after formation under agitating conditions (p < 0.05), it was surprisingly more resistant to the EO of C. cassia than the biofilm formed under static conditions (p < 0.05). All of the EOs and combinations tested presented antibacterial activity, almost against planktonic cells; however, the EO of C. cassia showed to be the most effective as a potential agent for the production of sanitizers for biofilm control in the food industries.