Effects of hippocampal lesions in overshadowing and blocking procedures.

The effects of ibotenic acid lesions of the hippocampus on overshadowing and blocking were examined in a Pavlovian appetitive conditioning experiment with rats. In a standard test of performance to the overshadowed or blocked target stimulus, sham-lesioned rats displayed both of these stimulus-selection phenomena. Rats with hippocampal lesions showed normal blocking, but no overshadowing. Subsequent inhibitory learning about the target stimulus was slower after overshadowing or blocking procedures than after a control procedure in sham-lesioned rats, but not in lesioned rats. These results suggest that exposure to these procedures can induce hippocampally mediated losses in conditioned stimulus associability (learning rate parameter), even when those losses are not a major determinant of the stimulus-selection effects themselves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social-emotional characteristics of preschool-aged children referred for Child Find screening and assessment: a comparative study

In order to determine changes in breathing patterns brought about by resistive loading, ventilation was recorded in 11 healthy subjects with four linear resistances (3.57, 5.75, 8.76 and 13.13 cmH2O L(-1) sec) added in a random order throughout the entire breath. At steady state, a breath-by-breath analysis of airflow was used to quantify the pattern of breathing in terms of respiratory variables: TI, TE, Tt, VT, VT/TI, TI/Tt, and by taking TI, TE, VT all together (TRIAD) and also the shape of the entire airflow profile quantified by harmonic analysis (ASTER). Group analysis using ANOVA showed significant changes in all variables. There were increasing changes with increasing loads in all variables, the smallest changes being in TI/Tt. Within to between-individual comparisons between two loads showed that only TI/Tt and the ASTER were more similar within than between-individuals for all comparisons. It was concluded that at steady state mechanisms of load compensation come into play inducing changes in the pattern of breathing proportional to the loads while maintaining some of the individual characteristics.     

The influence of CS-US interval on several different indices of learning in appetitive conditioning.

Four experiments examined the effects of varying the conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) interval (and US density) on learning in an appetitive magazine approach task with rats. Learning was assessed with conditioned response (CR) measures, as well as measures of sensory-specific stimulus-outcome associations (Pavlovian-instrumental transfer, potentiated feeding, and US devaluation). The results from these studies indicate that there exists an inverse relation between CS-US interval and magazine approach CRs, but that sensory-specific stimulus-outcome associations are established over a wide range of relatively long, but not short, CS-US intervals. These data suggest that simple CR measures provide different information about what is learned than measures of the specific stimulus-outcome association, and that time is a more critical variable for the former than latter component of learning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A longitudinal test of the influence of congruence: Job satisfaction, competency utilization, and counterproductive behavior.

The assumption that congruence between workers and jobs results in job satisfaction is fundamental to vocational theory. Evidence that person–job congruence goes with satisfaction is mixed; correlations are often too small to be of practical value. A hypothesis that interest congruence is more closely linked with job satisfaction for workers with clearly defined interests as opposed to workers with poorly defined interests is tested. Hypotheses about other consequences of person–job incongruence—counterproductive behavior, low job involvement, and turnover—also are tested in a predictive study. The hypothesis that differentiation moderates the relation between congruence and satisfaction and other hypotheses about the consequences of incongruence did not receive support, but the results do imply that congruence is a moderately efficient predictor of satisfaction when between-occupation sources of variance are excluded by the research design. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Amygdala Central Nucleus Function Is Necessary for Learning, but Not Expression, of Conditioned Auditory Orienting.

In Pavlovian appetitive conditioning, rats often acquire 2 classes of conditioned responses: those whose form is determined by the reinforcer, and those whose form is determined by characteristics of the conditioned stimulus (CS). Consistent with the results of previous lesion studies, reversible inactivation of amygdala central nucleus function during pairings of an auditory CS with food prevented the acquisition of conditioned orienting responses specific to auditory CSs, whereas food-related conditioned behaviors were acquired normally. Neither inactivation nor posttraining neurotoxic lesions of the central nucleus affected the expression of previously acquired conditioned orienting. Thus, although the central nucleus is critical to the acquisition of information required for conditioned orienting to auditory cues, it is not needed for maintaining this information for later use. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

In Vitro Selection of a Single-Stranded DNA Molecular Recognition Element against Atrazine

Widespread use of the chlorotriazine herbicide, atrazine, has led to serious environmental and human health consequences. Current methods of detecting atrazine contamination are neither rapid nor cost-effective. In this work, atrazine-specific single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) molecular recognition elements (MRE) were isolated. We utilized a stringent Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment (SELEX) methodology that placed the greatest emphasis on what the MRE should not bind to. After twelve rounds of SELEX, an atrazine-specific MRE with high affinity was obtained. The equilibrium dissociation constant (K_d) of the ssDNA sequence is 0.62 ± 0.21 nM. It also has significant selectivity for atrazine over atrazine metabolites and other pesticides found in environmentally similar locations and concentrations. Furthermore, we have detected environmentally relevant atrazine concentrations in river water using this MRE. The strong affinity and selectivity of the selected atrazine-specific ssDNA validated the stringent SELEX methodology and identified a MRE that will be useful for rapid atrazine detection in environmental samples.     

Mechanical damage to Gram-negative bacteria by surface plating with the Drigalski-spatula technique

Colony counting by spreading bacterial suspensions on plating media by various techniques is of general concern. Comparative studies between hand plating (Drigalski-spatula technique) for different time intervals and spiral plating resulted in significant differences in colony counts. Lower counts of Gram-negative bacteria were obtained by using hand plating for more than 10 s, compared with short time hand plating (5 s) or spiral plating. Colony counting of Gram-positive bacteria showed no differences between both techniques. Further characterisation of Escherichia coli cells spread with the Drigalski-spatula technique by electron microscopy revealed a large number of damaged cells compared to control samples. The data clearly shows that the mechanical forces during hand plating are sufficient to damage E. coli cells.     

Accelerating Machine-Learning Algorithms on FPGAs using Pattern-Based Decomposition

Machine-learning algorithms are employed in a wide variety of applications to extract useful information from data sets, and many are known to suffer from super-linear increases in computational time with increasing data size and number of signals being processed (data dimension). Certain principal machine-learning algorithms are commonly found embedded in larger detection, estimation, or classification operations. Three such principal algorithms are the Parzen window-based, non-parametric estimation of Probability Density Functions (PDFs), K-means clustering and correlation. Because they form an integral part of numerous machine-learning applications, fast and efficient execution of these algorithms is extremely desirable. FPGA-based reconfigurable computing (RC) has been successfully used to accelerate computationally intensive problems in a wide variety of scientific domains to achieve speedup over traditional software implementations. However, this potential benefit is quite often not fully realized because creating efficient FPGA designs is generally carried out in a laborious, case-specific manner requiring a great amount of redundant time and effort. In this paper, an approach using pattern-based decomposition for algorithm acceleration on FPGAs is proposed that offers significant increases in productivity via design reusability. Using this approach, we design, analyze, and implement a multi-dimensional PDF estimation algorithm using Gaussian kernels on FPGAs. First, the algorithm’s amenability to a hardware paradigm and expected speedups are predicted. After implementation, actual speedup and performance metrics are compared to the predictions, showing speedup on the order of 20× over a 3.2 GHz processor. Multi-core architectures are developed to further improve performance by scaling the design. Portability of the hardware design across multiple FPGA platforms is also analyzed. After implementing the PDF algorithm, the value of pattern-based decomposition to support reuse is demonstrated by rapid development of the K-means and correlation algorithms.