Search results for: cognitive maps

Authors: Jaspal Rana

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Oxidative stress has been identified as an underlying cause of ischemia-reperfusion (IR) related cognitive dysfunction and brain damage. Therefore, antioxidant based therapies to treat IR injury are being investigated. Allium cepa L. (onion) is used as culinary medicine and is documented to have marked antioxidant effects. Hence, the present study was designed to evaluate the effect of A. cepa outer scale extract (ACE) against IR induced cognition and biochemical deficit in mice. ACE was prepared by maceration with 70% methanol and fractionated into ethylacetate and aqueous fractions. Bilateral common carotid artery occlusion for 10 min followed by 24 h reperfusion was used to induce cerebral IR injury. Following IR injury, ACE (100 and 200 mg/kg) was administered orally to animals for 7 days once daily. Behavioral outcomes (memory and sensorimotor functions) were evaluated using Morris water maze and neurological severity score. Cerebral infarct size, brain thiobarbituric acid reactive species, reduced glutathione, and superoxide dismutase activity was also determined. Treatment with ACE significantly ameliorated IR mediated deterioration of memory and sensorimotor functions and rise in brain oxidative stress in animals. The results of the present investigation revealed that ACE improved functional outcomes after cerebral IR injury which may be attributed to its antioxidant properties.

Keywords: ischemia-reperfusion, neuroprotective, stroke, antioxidant

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Authors: A. Alyaaria, b, J. P. Wignerona, A. Ducharneb, Y. Kerrc, P. de Rosnayd, R. de Jeue, A. Govinda, A. Al Bitarc, C. Albergeld, J. Sabaterd, C. Moisya, P. Richaumec, A. Mialonc

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Global Level-3 surface soil moisture (SSM) maps from the passive microwave soil moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite (SMOSL3) have been released. To further improve the Level-3 retrieval algorithm, evaluation of the accuracy of the spatio-temporal variability of the SMOS Level 3 products (referred to here as SMOSL3) is necessary. In this study, a comparative analysis of SMOSL3 with a SSM product derived from the observations of the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) computed by implementing the Land Parameter Retrieval Model (LPRM) algorithm, referred to here as AMSRM, is presented. The comparison of both products (SMSL3 and AMSRM) were made against SSM products produced by a numerical weather prediction system (SM-DAS-2) at ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) for the 03/2010-09/2011 period at global scale. The latter product was considered here a 'reference' product for the inter-comparison of the SMOSL3 and AMSRM products. Three statistical criteria were used for the evaluation, the correlation coefficient (R), the root-mean-squared difference (RMSD), and the bias. Global maps of these criteria were computed, taking into account vegetation information in terms of biome types and Leaf Area Index (LAI). We found that both the SMOSL3 and AMSRM products captured well the spatio-temporal variability of the SM-DAS-2 SSM products in most of the biomes. In general, the AMSRM products overestimated (i.e., wet bias) while the SMOSL3 products underestimated (i.e., dry bias) SSM in comparison to the SM-DAS-2 SSM products. In term of correlation values, the SMOSL3 products were found to better capture the SSM temporal dynamics in highly vegetated biomes ('Tropical humid', 'Temperate Humid', etc.) while best results for AMSRM were obtained over arid and semi-arid biomes ('Desert temperate', 'Desert tropical', etc.). When removing the seasonal cycles in the SSM time variations to compute anomaly values, better correlation with the SM-DAS-2 SSM anomalies were obtained with SMOSL3 than with AMSRM, in most of the biomes with the exception of desert regions. Eventually, we showed that the accuracy of the remotely sensed SSM products is strongly related to LAI. Both the SMOSL3 and AMSRM (slightly better) SSM products correlate well with the SM-DAS2 products over regions with sparse vegetation for values of LAI < 1 (these regions represent almost 50% of the pixels considered in this global study). In regions where LAI>1, SMOSL3 outperformed AMSRM with respect to SM-DAS-2: SMOSL3 had almost consistent performances up to LAI = 6, whereas AMSRM performance deteriorated rapidly with increasing values of LAI.

Keywords: remote sensing, microwave, soil moisture, AMSR-E, SMOS

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Authors: Oluwayemisi D. Ishola, Lekan Ajijola

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Nigeria faces a demographic challenge characterized by a burgeoning youth population and an escalating fertility rate. A notable decline in the use of modern contraceptives among adolescent girls and young women compounds the challenge. The youthful demographic stands at a critical juncture in the nation's pursuit to fulfill its pledge of achieving a 27% modern contraceptive rate by 2030, embodying the potential to translate this ambitious commitment into a tangible reality. This research undertook a multi-dimensional examination to scrutinize contraceptive ideational disparities among adolescents and young women in Nigeria, with a particular emphasis on ideational factors. The data underpinning this study were drawn from a cross-sectional household survey carried out in the Nigerian states of Edo, Ogun, Plateau, and Niger between October 2019 and January 2020. The survey encompassed 2,857 sexually active women aged 15-24 years. Employing an ideational framework focusing on behavior that accentuates psychosocial factors, the study dissected nine unique ideational variables into three principal domains: social, cognitive, and emotional. Multivariate logistics regression analyses were used to assess associations between ideational elements and contraceptive use within the total sample and specific age brackets (adolescents of 15-19 years and youth of 20-24 years). For this study, a p-value less than 0.05 was considered indicative of statistical significance. The study's results revealed significant associations between the ideational variables and contraceptive use in total sample and among adolescent and youth, ranging from p < .05 to p < .001. The influence of each domain's predictors on Family Planning (FP) manifested variations when assessed separately and across the different age groups. Notably, cognitive and emotional domains were found to be the strongest predictor of contraceptive use when compared with social domains in the general sample and among youth. This study’s findings highlight the complex interplay of social, cognitive, and emotional factors in contraceptive use among young individuals. Understanding these dynamics is crucial in developing effective strategies to overcome barriers and improve access to contraceptive services among young women in Nigeria.

Keywords: adolescents, contraception, ideation, youth

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Authors: Zheng Wang, Zhenhong Li, Jon Mills

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Ground-based synthetic aperture radar (GBSAR) represents a powerful remote sensing tool for deformation monitoring towards various geohazards, e.g. landslides, mudflows, avalanches, infrastructure failures, and the subsidence of residential areas. Unlike spaceborne SAR with a fixed revisit period, GBSAR data can be acquired with an adjustable temporal resolution through either continuous or discontinuous operation. However, challenges arise from processing high temporal-resolution continuous GBSAR data, including the extreme cost of computational random-access-memory (RAM), the delay of displacement maps, and the loss of temporal evolution. Moreover, repositioning errors between discontinuous campaigns impede the accurate measurement of surface displacements. Therefore, a versatile package with two complete chains is developed in this study in order to process both continuous and discontinuous GBSAR data and address the aforementioned issues. The first chain is based on a small-baseline subset concept and it processes continuous GBSAR images unit by unit. Images within a window form a basic unit. By taking this strategy, the RAM requirement is reduced to only one unit of images and the chain can theoretically process an infinite number of images. The evolution of surface displacements can be detected as it keeps temporarily-coherent pixels which are present only in some certain units but not in the whole observation period. The chain supports real-time processing of the continuous data and the delay of creating displacement maps can be shortened without waiting for the entire dataset. The other chain aims to measure deformation between discontinuous campaigns. Temporal averaging is carried out on a stack of images in a single campaign in order to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of discontinuous data and minimise the loss of coherence. The temporal-averaged images are then processed by a particular interferometry procedure integrated with advanced interferometric SAR algorithms such as robust coherence estimation, non-local filtering, and selection of partially-coherent pixels. Experiments are conducted using both synthetic and real-world GBSAR data. Displacement time series at the level of a few sub-millimetres are achieved in several applications (e.g. a coastal cliff, a sand dune, a bridge, and a residential area), indicating the feasibility of the developed GBSAR data processing package for deformation monitoring of a wide range of scientific and practical applications.

Keywords: ground-based synthetic aperture radar, interferometry, small baseline subset algorithm, deformation monitoring

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Authors: Alexandra Serra, Nair Torrão, Rui G. Serôdio, José A. Lima

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The present study aimed to evaluate the incidence and the prevalence of domestic violence legitimatory beliefs, emotional regulation difficulties and, early maladaptive schemas regarding intimidate partner violence in a sample of 50 Portuguese inmates. As expected, results show high levels of legitimatory beliefs, significant difficulties of emotional regulation and a set of high levels of early maladaptive schemas that clearly compromise the inmates affective-cognitive functioning. The most prevalent set of maladaptive schemas are associated with depression, anxiety, hostility, reduced ability to empathize and, dependence on the approval of others, which, combined, may trigger aggressive responses towards the intimate’s partner. Being victimized in their childhood and having committing murder are not differentiating factors on the measures we analyzed, but alcohol consumption may be associated with an intensification of domestic violence legitimatory beliefs. In the discussion of our findings, we compare the pattern of the psychosocial measures we used with the equivalent results obtained with convicted individuals that attend a community compulsory program, specifically designed for domestic violence perpetrators. We also highlight the importance of implementing specialized interventions in prison settings focusing on an evidence-based-practice.

Keywords: domestic violence, intimate partner offenders, incidence and prevalence of legitimatory beliefs, Portuguese inmates

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Authors: Bincy Mathew, B. William Dharma Raja

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Successful decision making in a social setting depends on the ability to understand the intentions, emotions and beliefs of others. Children live and grow in the social world. Individuals think to satisfy their curiosity and mush of their social thought is practical, to attain their goal. Children’s thought about their social world influences how they behave towards it. The main purpose of this paper is to review the influence of decision making on adjustment behaviour of visually challenged adolescents. The sample was purposively selected to study the cases of two of the visually challenged adolescents from a Special School, in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, India. The authors appraised the observed behaviour of adjustment in these children. It may be concluded that the social cognitive ability of decision making is at least, to certain extent, influences adjustment behaviour of visually challenged adolescents. Adjustment behaviour attempts to maintain a child’s level of physiological and psychological equilibrium and it is directed towards tension reduction. It involves a state of harmonious relationship existing between the individual and one’s environment so that adjustment is a matter of interaction between the capacities of the individual and the demands of the environment. The study also found that music induces a receptive mood that generally enhances cognitive processing and every decision that the child makes has its brunt on the behaviour. It is solely based on the case study carried out by the authors.

Keywords: social cognition, decision making, adjustment behaviour, adolescents

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Authors: Roberta Martino, Viviana Ventre

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Intertemporal choices are choices under conditions of uncertainty in which the consequences are distributed over time. The Discounted Utility Model is the essential reference for describing the individual in the context of intertemporal choice. The model is based on the idea that the individual selects the alternative with the highest utility, which is calculated by multiplying the cardinal utility of the outcome, as if the reception were instantaneous, by the discount function that determines a decrease in the utility value according to how the actual reception of the outcome is far away from the moment the choice is made. Initially, the discount function was assumed to have an exponential trend, whose decrease over time is constant, in line with a profile of a rational investor described by classical economics. Instead, empirical evidence called for the formulation of alternative, hyperbolic models that better represented the actual actions of the investor. Attitudes that do not comply with the principles of classical rationality are termed anomalous, i.e., difficult to rationalize and describe through normative models. The development of behavioral finance, which describes investor behavior through cognitive psychology, has shown that deviations from rationality are due to the limited rationality condition of human beings. What this means is that when a choice is made in a very difficult and information-rich environment, the brain does a compromise job between the cognitive effort required and the selection of an alternative. Moreover, the evaluation and selection phase of the alternative, the collection and processing of information, are dynamics conditioned by systematic distortions of the decision-making process that are the behavioral biases involving the individual's emotional and cognitive system. In this paper we present an original decomposition of the discount function to investigate the psychological principles of hyperbolic discounting. It is possible to decompose the curve into two components: the first component is responsible for the smaller decrease in the outcome as time increases and is related to the individual's impatience; the second component relates to the change in the direction of the tangent vector to the curve and indicates how much the individual perceives the indeterminacy of the future indicating his or her aversion to uncertainty. This decomposition allows interesting conclusions to be drawn with respect to the concept of impatience and the emotional drives involved in decision-making. The contribution that neuroscience can make to decision theory and inter-temporal choice theory is vast as it would allow the description of the decision-making process as the relationship between the individual's emotional and cognitive factors. Neurofinance is a discipline that uses a multidisciplinary approach to investigate how the brain influences decision-making. Indeed, considering that the decision-making process is linked to the activity of the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, neurofinance can help determine the extent to which abnormal attitudes respect the principles of rationality.

Keywords: impatience, intertemporal choice, neurofinance, rationality, uncertainty

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Authors: Ian M. Grey, Bryan Roche, Anna Dillon, Justin Thomas, Sarah Cassidy, Dylan Colbert, Ian Stewart

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This paper presents findings from a study conducted in two schools in Abu Dhabi. The hypothesis is that teaching young children to derive various relations between stimuli leads to increases in full-scale IQ scores of typically developing children. In the experimental group, sixteen 6-7-year-old children were exposed over six weeks to an intensive training intervention designed specifically for their age group. This training intervention, presented on a tablet, aimed to improve their understanding of the relations Same, Opposite, Different, contextual control over the concept of Sameness and Difference, and purely arbitrary derived relational responding for Sameness and Difference. In the control group, sixteen 6-7-year-old children interacted with KIBO robotics over six weeks. KIBO purports to improve cognitive skills through engagement with STEAM activities. Increases in full-scale IQ were recorded for most children in the experimental group, while no increases in full-scale IQ were recorded for the control group. These findings support the hypothesis that relational skills underlie many aspects of general cognitive ability.

Keywords: early childhood, derived relational responding, intelligence, relational frame theory, relational skills

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Authors: Lea Lenhardt, Ivana Zeković, Tatjana Dramićanin, Miroslav D. Dramićanin

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Fluorescence spectroscopy coupled with parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) and artificial neural networks (ANN) were used for characterization and classification of honey. Excitation emission spectra were obtained for 95 honey samples of different botanical origin (acacia, sunflower, linden, meadow, and fake honey) by recording emission from 270 to 640 nm with excitation in the range of 240-500 nm. Fluorescence spectra were described with a six-component PARAFAC model, and PARAFAC scores were further processed with two types of ANN’s (feed-forward network and self-organizing maps) to obtain algorithms for classification of honey on the basis of their botanical origin. Both ANN’s detected fake honey samples with 100% sensitivity and specificity.

Keywords: honey, fluorescence, PARAFAC, artificial neural networks

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Authors: Daphne Sobolev, Niklas Voege

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During the last three decades, consumer ethics perceptions have attracted the attention of a large number of researchers. Nevertheless, little is known about the effect of the cognitive and situational contexts of the decision on ethics judgments. In this paper, the interrelationship between consumers’ ethics perceptions, legality evaluations and mind-sets are explored. Legality evaluations represent the cognitive context of the ethical judgments, whereas mind-sets represent their situational context. Drawing on moral development theories and priming theories, it is hypothesized that both factors are significantly related to consumer ethics perceptions. To test this hypothesis, 289 participants were allocated to three mind-set experimental conditions and a control group. Participants in the mind-set conditions were primed for aggressiveness, politeness or awareness to the negative legal consequences of breaking the law. Mind-sets were induced using a sentence-unscrambling task, in which target words were included. Ethics and legality judgments were assessed using consumer ethics and internet ethics questionnaires. All participants were asked to rate the ethicality and legality of consumer actions described in the questionnaires. The results showed that consumer ethics and legality perceptions were significantly correlated. Moreover, including legality evaluations as a variable in ethics judgment models increased the predictive power of the models. In addition, inducing aggressiveness in participants reduced their sensitivity to ethical issues; priming awareness to negative legal consequences increased their sensitivity to ethics when uncertainty about the legality of the judged scenario was high. Furthermore, the correlation between ethics and legality judgments was significant overall mind-set conditions. However, the results revealed conflicts between ethics and legality perceptions: consumers considered 10%-14% of the presented behaviors unethical and legal, or ethical and illegal. In 10-23% of the questions, participants indicated that they did not know whether the described action was legal or not. In addition, an asymmetry between the effects of aggressiveness and politeness priming was found. The results show that the legality judgments and mind-sets interact with consumer ethics perceptions. Thus, they portray consumer ethical judgments as dynamical processes which are inseparable from other cognitive processes and situational variables. They highlight that legal and ethical education, as well as adequate situational cues at the service place, could have a positive effect on consumer ethics perceptions. Theoretical contribution is discussed.

Keywords: consumer ethics, legality judgments, mind-set, priming, aggressiveness

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Authors: Svetlana Ignatjeva, Jelena Slesareva

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The aim of the study is development and adaptation of the method to analyze and quantify the indicators characterizing the relationship between a company and its employees. Diagnostics of such indicators is one of the most complex and actual issues in psychology of labour. The offered method is based on the questionnaire; its indicators reflect cognitive, affective and connotative components of socio-psychological attitude of employees to be as efficient as possible in their professional activities. This approach allows measure not only the selected factors but also such parameters as cognitive and behavioural dissonances. Adaptation of the questionnaire includes factor structure analysis and suitability analysis of phenomena indicators measured in terms of internal consistency of individual factors. Structural validity of the questionnaire was tested by exploratory factor analysis. Extraction Method: Principal Component Analysis. Rotation Method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization. Factor analysis allows reduce dimension of the phenomena moving from the indicators to aggregative indexes and latent variables. Aggregative indexes are obtained as the sum of relevant indicators followed by standardization. The coefficient Cronbach's Alpha was used to assess the reliability-consistency of the questionnaire items. The two-step cluster analysis in the space of allocated factors allows classify employees according to their attitude to work in the company. The results of psychometric testing indicate possibility of using the developed technique for the analysis of employees’ attitude towards their work in companies and development of recommendations on their optimization.

Keywords: involved in the organization, loyalty, organizations, method

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Authors: Yu-Shi Ye, Jia-Min Wu, Jhih-Ci Li

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Background: Most orthopedic inpatients and primary caregivers are elderly, and patients are at high risk of falls. We set up a quality control team to analyze the root cause and found the following issues: 1. The nursing staff did not conduct cognitive assessments of patients and their primary caregivers to ensure that health education content was understood. 2. Nurses prefer to use spoken language in health education but lack the skills to use diverse teaching materials. 3. Newly recruited nurses have insufficient awareness of fall prevention. Methods: The study subjects were 16 nurses in the orthopedic ward of a teaching hospital in central Taiwan. We implemented the following strategies: 1. Developed a fall simulation teaching plan and conducted teaching courses and assessments in the morning meeting; 2. Designed and used a "fall prevention awareness card" to improve the prevention awareness of elderly patients; 3. All staff (including new staff) received experiential education training. Results: In 2021, 40% of patients in the orthopedic wards were aged 60-79 years (792/1979) with a high risk of falls. According to data collection, the incidence of falls in hospitalized patients was 0.04% (5/12651), which exceeded the threshold of 0.02% in our ward. After completing the on-the-job education training in October, the nursing staff expressed that they were more aware of the special situation of fall prevention. Through practical sharing and drills, combined with experiential teaching strategies, nurses can reconstruct the safety awareness of fall prevention and deepen their cognitive memory. Participants scored between 30 and 80 on the pretest (16 students, mean: 72.6) and between 90 and 100 on the post-test (16 students, mean: 92.6), resulting in a 73.8% improvement in overall scores. We have a total of 4 new employees who have all completed the first 3 months of compulsory PGY courses. From January to April 2022, the incidence of falls in hospitalized patients was 0.025% (1/3969). We have made good improvements and will continue to track the outcome. Discussion: In addition to enhancing the awareness of falls among nursing staff, how-to guide patients and primary caregivers to prevent falls is also the focus of improvement. The proper way of health education can be better understood through practical exercises and case sharing.

Keywords: experiential teaching strategies, fall prevention, cognitive card, elderly patients, orthopedic wards

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Authors: Marielle Leijten, Catherine Meulemans, Sven De Maeyer, Luuk Van Waes

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For the diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), a large variety of neuropsychological tests are available. In some of these tests, linguistic processing - both oral and written - is an important factor. Language disturbances might serve as a strong indicator for an underlying neurodegenerative disorder like AD. However, the current diagnostic instruments for language assessment mainly focus on product measures, such as text length or number of errors, ignoring the importance of the process that leads to written or spoken language production. In this study, it is our aim to describe and test differences between cognitive and impaired elderly on the basis of a selection of writing process variables (inter- and intrapersonal characteristics). These process variables are mainly related to pause times, because the number, length, and location of pauses have proven to be an important indicator of the cognitive complexity of a process. Method: Participants that were enrolled in our research were chosen on the basis of a number of basic criteria necessary to collect reliable writing process data. Furthermore, we opted to match the thirteen cognitively impaired patients (8 MCI and 5 AD) with thirteen cognitively healthy elderly. At the start of the experiment, participants were each given a number of tests, such as the Mini-Mental State Examination test (MMSE), the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS), the forward and backward digit span and the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (EHI). Also, a questionnaire was used to collect socio-demographic information (age, gender, eduction) of the subjects as well as more details on their level of computer literacy. The tests and questionnaire were followed by two typing tasks and two picture description tasks. For the typing tasks participants had to copy (type) characters, words and sentences from a screen, whereas the picture description tasks each consisted of an image they had to describe in a few sentences. Both the typing and the picture description tasks were logged with Inputlog, a keystroke logging tool that allows us to log and time stamp keystroke activity to reconstruct and describe text production processes. The main rationale behind keystroke logging is that writing fluency and flow reveal traces of the underlying cognitive processes. This explains the analytical focus on pause (length, number, distribution, location, etc.) and revision (number, type, operation, embeddedness, location, etc.) characteristics. As in speech, pause times are seen as indexical of cognitive effort. Results. Preliminary analysis already showed some promising results concerning pause times before, within and after words. For all variables, mixed effects models were used that included participants as a random effect and MMSE scores, GDS scores and word categories (such as determiners and nouns) as a fixed effect. For pause times before and after words cognitively impaired patients paused longer than healthy elderly. These variables did not show an interaction effect between the group participants (cognitively impaired or healthy elderly) belonged to and word categories. However, pause times within words did show an interaction effect, which indicates pause times within certain word categories differ significantly between patients and healthy elderly.

Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, keystroke logging, matching, writing process

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Authors: Moein Izadi, Ali Mohammadzadeh

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Detection of damaged parts of roads after earthquake is essential for coordinating rescuers. In this study, an approach is presented for the semi-automatic detection of damaged roads in a city using pre-event vector maps and both pre- and post-earthquake QuickBird satellite images. Damage is defined in this study as the debris of damaged buildings adjacent to the roads. Some spectral and texture features are considered for SVM classification step to detect damages. Finally, the proposed method is tested on QuickBird pan-sharpened images from the Bam City earthquake and the results show that an overall accuracy of 81% and a kappa coefficient of 0.71 are achieved for the damage detection. The obtained results indicate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed approach.

Keywords: SVM classifier, disaster management, road damage detection, quickBird images

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Authors: Roberta Martino, Viviana Ventre

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Every day we face choices whose consequences are deferred in time. These types of choices are the intertemporal choices and play an important role in the social, economic, and financial world. The Discounted Utility Model is the mathematical model of reference to calculate the utility of intertemporal prospects. The discount rate is the main element of the model as it describes how the individual perceives the indeterminacy of subsequent periods. Empirical evidence has shown a discrepancy between the behavior expected from the predictions of the model and the effective choices made from the decision makers. In particular, the term temporal inconsistency indicates those choices that do not remain optimal with the passage of time. This phenomenon has been described with hyperbolic models of the discount rate which, unlike the linear or exponential nature assumed by the discounted utility model, is not constant over time. This paper explores the problem of inconsistency by tracing the decision-making process through the concept of impatience. The degree of impatience and the degree of decrease of impatience are two parameters that allow to quantify the weight of emotional factors and cognitive limitations during the evaluation and selection of alternatives. In fact, although the theory assumes perfectly rational decision makers, behavioral finance and cognitive psychology have made it possible to understand that distortions in the decision-making process and emotional influence have an inevitable impact on the decision-making process. The degree to which impatience is diminished is the focus of the first part of the study. By comparing consistent and inconsistent preferences over time, it was possible to verify that some anomalies in the discounted utility model are a result of the combination of cognitive bias and emotional factors. In particular: the delay effect and the interval effect are compared through the concept of misperception of time; starting from psychological considerations, a criterion is proposed to identify the causes of the magnitude effect that considers the differences in outcomes rather than their ratio; the sign effect is analyzed by integrating in the evaluation of prospects with negative outcomes the psychological aspects of loss aversion provided by Prospect Theory. An experiment implemented confirms three findings: the greatest variation in the degree of decrease in impatience corresponds to shorter intervals close to the present; the greatest variation in the degree of impatience occurs for outcomes of lower magnitude; the variation in the degree of impatience is greatest for negative outcomes. The experimental phase was implemented with the construction of the hyperbolic factor through the administration of questionnaires constructed for each anomaly. This work formalizes the underlying causes of the discrepancy between the discounted utility model and the empirical evidence of preference reversal.

Keywords: decreasing impatience, discount utility model, hyperbolic discount, hyperbolic factor, impatience

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Authors: Dohun Kim

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Technological innovations have stimulated flipped learning in many disciplines, including language teaching. It is a specific type of blended learning, which combines onsite (i.e. face-to-face) with online experiences to produce effective, efficient and flexible learning. Flipped learning literally ‘flips’ conventional teaching and learning activities upside down: it leverages technologies to deliver a lecture and direct instruction—other asynchronous activities as well—outside the classroom to reserve onsite time for interaction and activities in the upper cognitive realms: applying, analysing, evaluating and creating. Unlike the conventional flipped approaches, which focused on video lecture, followed by face-to-face or on-site session, new innovative methods incorporate various means and structures to serve the needs of different academic disciplines and classrooms. In the light of such innovations, this study adopted ‘student-engaged’ approaches to interpreter training and contrasts them with traditional classrooms. To this end, students were also encouraged to engage in asynchronous activities online, and innovative technologies, such as Telepresence, were employed. Based on the class implementation, a thorough examination was conducted to examine how we can structure and implement flipped classrooms for language and interpreting training while actively engaging learners. This study adopted a quantitative research method, while complementing it with a qualitative one. The key findings suggest that the significance of the instructor’s role does not dwindle, but his/her role changes to a moderator and a facilitator. Second, we can apply flipped learning to both theory- and practice-oriented modules. Third, students’ integration into the community of inquiry is of significant importance to foster active and higher-order learning. Fourth, cognitive presence and competence can be enhanced through strengthened and integrated teaching and social presences. Well-orchestrated teaching presence stimulates students to find out the problems and voices the convergences and divergences, while fluid social presence facilitates the exchanges of knowledge and the adjustment of solutions, which eventually contributes to consolidating cognitive presence—a key ingredient that enables the application and testing of the solutions and reflection thereon.

Keywords: blended learning, Community of Inquiry, flipped learning, interpreter training, student-centred learning

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Authors: Ahad Salimi, Hassan Masoumi

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Prostate cancer is one of the most common recognized cancers in men, and, is one of the most important mortality factors of cancer in this group. Determining of prostate’s boundary in TRUS (Transrectal Ultra Sound) images is very necessary for prostate cancer treatments. The weakness edges and speckle noise make the ultrasound images inherently to segment. In this paper a new automatic algorithm for prostate segmentation in TRUS images proposed that include three main stages. At first morphological smoothing and sticks filtering are used for noise removing. In second step, for finding a point in prostate region, SOFM algorithm is enlisted and in the last step, the boundary of prostate extracting accompanying active contour is employed. For validation of proposed method, a number of experiments are conducted. The results obtained by our algorithm show the promise of the proposed algorithm.

Keywords: SOFM, preprocessing, GVF contour, segmentation

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Authors: Kevin F. Hsu, Alvin Chua, Sarah X. Lin

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As a multilingual society, Singaporean names for different parts of the city have changed over time. Residents included Indigenous Malays, dialect-speakers from China, European settler-colonists, and Tamil-speakers from South India. Each group would name locations in their own languages. Today, as ancestral tongues are increasingly supplanted by English, contemporary Singaporeans’ understanding of once-common place names is disappearing. After demolition or redevelopment, some urban places will only exist in archival records or in human memory. United Nations conferences on the standardization of geographic names have called attention to how place names relate to identity, well-being, and a sense of belonging. The Singapore Place-Naming Project responds to these imperatives by capturing past and present place names through digitizing historical maps, mining archival records, and applying selective crowd-sourcing to trace the evolution of place names throughout the city. The project ensures that both formal and vernacular geographical names remain accessible to historians, city planners, and the public. The project is compiling a gazetteer, a geospatial archive of placenames, with streets, buildings, landmarks, and other points of interest (POI) appearing in the historic maps and planning documents of Singapore, currently held by the National Archives of Singapore, the National Library Board, university departments, and the Urban Redevelopment Authority. To create a spatial layer of information, the project links each place name to either a geo-referenced point, line segment, or polygon, along with the original source material in which the name appears. This record is supplemented by crowd-sourced contributions from civil service officers and heritage specialists, drawing from their collective memory to (1) define geospatial boundaries of historic places that appear in past documents, but maybe unfamiliar to users today, and (2) identify and record vernacular place names not captured in formal planning documents. An intuitive interface allows participants to demarcate feature classes, vernacular phrasings, time periods, and other knowledge related to historical or forgotten spaces. Participants are stratified into age bands and ethnicity to improve representativeness. Future iterations could allow additional public contributions. Names reveal meanings that communities assign to each place. While existing historical maps of Singapore allow users to toggle between present-day and historical raster files, this project goes a step further by adding layers of social understanding and planning documents. Tracking place names illuminates linguistic, cultural, commercial, and demographic shifts in Singapore, in the context of transformations of the urban environment. The project also demonstrates how a moderated, selectively crowd-sourced effort can solicit useful geospatial data at scale, sourced from different generations, and at higher granularity than traditional surveys, while mitigating negative impacts of unmoderated crowd-sourcing. Stakeholder agencies believe the project will achieve several objectives, including Supporting heritage conservation and public education; Safeguarding intangible cultural heritage; Providing historical context for street, place or development-renaming requests; Enhancing place-making with deeper historical knowledge; Facilitating emergency and social services by tagging legal addresses to vernacular place names; Encouraging public engagement with heritage by eliciting multi-stakeholder input.

Keywords: collective memory, crowd-sourced, digital heritage, geospatial, geographical names, linguistic heritage, place-naming, Singapore, Southeast Asia

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Authors: Chia-Feng Lu, Yuh-Jen Wang, Shin Teng, Yu-Te Wu, Sui-Hing Yan

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Brain functional networks based on resting-state EEG data were compared between patients with mild Alzheimer’s disease (mAD) and matched patients with amnestic subtype of mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). We integrated the time–frequency cross mutual information (TFCMI) method to estimate the EEG functional connectivity between cortical regions and the network analysis based on graph theory to further investigate the alterations of functional networks in mAD compared with aMCI group. We aimed at investigating the changes of network integrity, local clustering, information processing efficiency, and fault tolerance in mAD brain networks for different frequency bands based on several topological properties, including degree, strength, clustering coefficient, shortest path length, and efficiency. Results showed that the disruptions of network integrity and reductions of network efficiency in mAD characterized by lower degree, decreased clustering coefficient, higher shortest path length, and reduced global and local efficiencies in the delta, theta, beta2, and gamma bands were evident. The significant changes in network organization can be used in assisting discrimination of mAD from aMCI in clinical.

Keywords: EEG, functional connectivity, graph theory, TFCMI

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Authors: Behnam Jay

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In this study, the phenomenon called “Strengthening” in human language refers to the strategic use of multiple linguistic elements to intensify specific grammatical or semantic functions. This study explores cross-linguistic evidence demonstrating how strengthening appears in various grammatical structures. In French and Spanish, double negatives are used not to cancel each other out but to intensify the negation, challenging the conventional understanding that double negatives result in an affirmation. For example, in French, il ne sait pas (He dosn't know.) uses both “ne” and “pas” to strengthen the negation. Similarly, in Spanish, No vio a nadie. (He didn't see anyone.) uses “no” and “nadie” to achieve a stronger negative meaning. In Japanese, double honorifics, often perceived as erroneous, are reinterpreted as intentional efforts to amplify politeness, as seen in forms like ossharareru (to say, (honorific)). Typically, an honorific morpheme appears only once in a predicate, but native speakers often use double forms to reinforce politeness. In Turkish, the word eğer (indicating a condition) is sometimes used together with the conditional suffix -se(sa) within the same sentence to strengthen the conditional meaning, as in Eğer yağmur yağarsa, o gelmez. (If it rains, he won't come). Furthermore, the combination of question words with rising intonation in various languages serves to enhance interrogative force. These instances suggest that strengthening is a cross-linguistic strategy that may reflect a broader cognitive mechanism in language processing. This paper investigates these cases in detail, providing insights into why languages may adopt such strategies. No corpus was used for collecting examples from different languages. Instead, the examples were gathered from languages the author encountered during their research, focusing on specific grammatical and morphological phenomena relevant to the concept of strengthening. Due to the complexity of employing a comparative method across multiple languages, this approach was chosen to illustrate common patterns of strengthening based on available data. It is acknowledged that different languages may have different strengthening strategies in various linguistic domains. While the primary focus is on grammar and morphology, it is recognized that the strengthening phenomenon may also appear in phonology. Future research should aim to include a broader range of languages and utilize more comprehensive comparative methods where feasible to enhance methodological rigor and explore this phenomenon more thoroughly.

Keywords: strengthening, cross-linguistic analysis, syntax, semantics, cognitive mechanism

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Authors: Lindsey Carruthers, Alexandra Willis, Rory MacLean

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Introduction: It has been proposed that distractibility, a key diagnostic criterion of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), may be associated with higher creativity levels in some individuals. Anecdotal and empirical evidence has shown that ADHD is therefore beneficial to creative problem-solving, and the generation of new ideas and products. Previous studies have only used one or two measures of attention, which is insufficient given that it is a complex cognitive process. The current study aimed to determine in which ways performance on creative problem-solving tasks and a range of attention tests may be related, and if performance differs between adults with and without ADHD. Methods: 150 adults, 47 males and 103 females (mean age=28.81 years, S.D.=12.05 years), were tested at Edinburgh Napier University. Of this set, 50 participants had ADHD, and 100 did not, forming the control group. Each participant completed seven attention tasks, assessing focussed, sustained, selective, and divided attention. Creative problem-solving was measured using divergent thinking tasks, which require multiple original solutions for one given problem. Two types of divergent thinking task were used: verbal (requires written responses) and figural (requires drawn responses). Each task is scored for idea originality, with higher scores indicating more creative responses. Correlational analyses were used to explore relationships between attention and creative problem-solving, and t-tests were used to study the between group differences. Results: The control group scored higher on originality for figural divergent thinking (t(148)= 3.187, p< .01), whereas the ADHD group had more original ideas for the verbal divergent thinking task (t(148)= -2.490, p < .05). Within the control group, figural divergent thinking scores were significantly related to both selective (r= -.295 to -.285, p < .01) and divided attention (r= .206 to .290, p < .05). Alternatively, within the ADHD group, both selective (r= -.390 to -.356, p < .05) and divided (r= .328 to .347, p < .05) attention are related to verbal divergent thinking. Conclusions: Selective and divided attention are both related to divergent thinking, however the performance patterns are different between each group, which may point to cognitive variance in the processing of these problems and how they are managed. The creative differences previously found between those with and without ADHD may be dependent on task type, which to the author’s knowledge, has not been distinguished previously. It appears that ADHD does not specifically lead to higher creativity, but may provide explanation for creative differences when compared to those without the disorder.

Keywords: ADHD, attention, creativity, problem-solving

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Authors: Pooja Ichplani, Archna Kumar, Jessica Mayberry

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Community Video (CV) is a participatory medium that has immense potential to strengthen community communications and amplify the voice of people for their empowerment. By building capacities especially of marginalized community groups and providing a platform to freely voice their ideas, CV endeavours to bring about shifts towards more participatory, bottom up development processes and greater power in the hands of the people, especially the disadvantaged. In various parts of the world, among marginalized community groups, community video initiatives have become instrumental in facilitating micro-level, yet significant changes in communities. Video Volunteers (VV) is an organization that promotes community media and works towards providing disadvantaged communities with journalistic, critical thinking and creative skills they need for catalysing change in their communities. Working since 2002, VV has evolved a unique community media model fostering locally-owned and managed media production, as well as building people’s capacities to articulate and share their perspectives on the issues that matter to them – on a local and a global scale. Further, by integrating a livelihood aspect within its model, VV has actively involved people from poor marginalized communities and provided them a new tool for serving their communities whilst keeping their identities intact. This paper, based on a qualitative research, seeks to map the range of VV impacts in communities and provide an in-depth analysis of factors contributing to VV impacting change in communities. Study tools included content analysis of a longitudinal sample of impact videos produced, narratives of community correspondents using the Most Significant Change Technique (MSCT) and interviews with key informants. Using a multi-fold analysis, the paper seeks to gain holistic insights. At the first level, the paper profiles the Community Correspondents (CCs), spearheading change, and maps their personal and social context and their perceptions about VV in their personal lives. Secondly, at an organizational level, the paper maps the significance of impacts brought about in the CCs communities and their association, challenges and achievements while working with VV. Lastly, at the community level, it consists of analysis of the nature of impacts achieved and aspects influencing the same. Finally, the study critiques the functioning of Video Volunteers as a community media initiative using the tipping point theory emphasizing on the power of context that is constituted by their socio-cultural environment. It concludes how empowerment of its Community Correspondents, multifarious activities during pre and post video production, and other innovative mechanisms have enabled in center staging issues of marginalized communities and snowballing processes of change in communities.

Keywords: community media, empowerment, participatory communication, social change

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Authors: Dimitrios Binas, Marianna Konidari, Charis Bourgioti, Lia Angela Moulopoulou, Theodore Economopoulos, George Matsopoulos

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High grade ovarian epithelial cancer (OEC) is fatal gynecological cancer and the poor prognosis of this entity is closely related to considerable intratumoral genetic heterogeneity. By examining imaging data, it is possible to assess the heterogeneity of tumorous tissue. This study proposes a methodology for aligning, segmenting and finally visualizing information from various magnetic resonance imaging series in order to construct 3D models of heterogeneity maps from the same tumor in OEC patients. The proposed system may be used as an adjunct digital tool by health professionals for personalized medicine, as it allows for an easy visual assessment of the heterogeneity of the examined tumor.

Keywords: image segmentation, ovarian epithelial cancer, quantitative characteristics, image registration, tumor visualization

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Authors: Mohammad Khazaei, Reza Rostami, Hassan Gharayagh Zandi, Ruhollah Basatnia, Mahboubeh Ghayour Najafabadi

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Introduction: This study delves into the influence of diverse interventions on brain functional connectivity among young male basketball players. Given the significance of understanding how interventions affect cognitive functions in athletes, particularly in the context of basketball, this research contributes to the growing body of knowledge in sports neuroscience. Methods: Three distinct groups were selected for comprehensive investigation: the Motivational Interview Group, Placebo Consumption Group, and Ritalin Consumption Group. The study involved assessing brain functional connectivity using various frequency bands (Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta1, Beta2, Gamma, and Total Band) before and after the interventions. The participants were subjected to specific interventions corresponding to their assigned groups. Results: The findings revealed substantial differences in brain functional connectivity across the studied groups. The Motivational Interview Group exhibited optimal outcomes in PLI (Total Band) connectivity. The Placebo Consumption Group demonstrated a marked impact on PLV (Alpha) connectivity, and the Ritalin Consumption Group experienced a considerable enhancement in imCoh (Total Band) connectivity. Discussion: The observed variations in brain functional connectivity underscore the nuanced effects of different interventions on young male basketball players. The enhanced connectivity in specific frequency bands suggests potential cognitive and performance improvements. Notably, the Motivational Interview and Placebo Consumption groups displayed unique patterns, emphasizing the multifaceted nature of interventions. These findings contribute to the understanding of tailored interventions for optimizing cognitive functions in young male basketball players. Conclusion: This study provides valuable insights into the intricate relationship between interventions and brain functional connectivity in young male basketball players. Further research with expanded sample sizes and more sophisticated statistical analyses is recommended to corroborate and expand upon these initial findings. The implications of this study extend to the broader field of sports neuroscience, aiding in the development of targeted interventions for athletes in various disciplines.

Keywords: electroencephalography, Ritalin, Placebo effect, motivational interview

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Authors: Dhea Kothari

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There is an extensive amount of research that has examined the positive relationship between creativity and hypomania in terms of creative accomplishments, eminence, behaviors, occupations. Previous research had recruited participants based on creative occupations or stages of hypomania or bipolar disorder. This thesis focused on the relationship between hypomania and creative cognitive potential, such as divergent thinking and insight problem-solving. This was examined at an undergraduate educational level by recruiting students majoring in art, majoring in natural sciences (NSCI) and those double majoring in arts and NSCI. Participants were given a modified Alternate Uses Task (AUT) to measure divergent thinking and a set of rebus puzzles to measure insight problem-solving. Both tasks involved a level of overcoming functional fixedness. A negative association was observed between hypomania and originality of responses on the AUT when an object with low functional fixedness was given to all participants. On the other hand, a positive association was found between hypomania and originality of responses on the AUT when an object with high functional fixedness was given to the participants majoring in NSCI. Therefore, the research suggests that an increased ability to overcome functional fixedness might be central to individuals with hypomania and individuals with higher creative cognitive potential.

Keywords: creative cognition, convergent thinking, creativity, divergent thinking, insight, major type, problem-solving

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Authors: Maria Isabel Garcia-Planas, Maria Victoria Garcia-Camba

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Recent advances in cognitive neuroscience have allowed a step forward in perceiving the processes involved in learning from the point of view of the acquisition of new information or the modification of existing mental content. The evoked potentials technique reveals how basic brain processes interact to achieve adequate and flexible behaviours. The objective of this work, using evoked potentials, is to study if it is possible to distinguish if a patient suffers a specific type of learning disorder to decide the possible therapies to follow. The methodology used, is the analysis of the dynamics of different areas of the brain during a cognitive activity to find the relationships between the different areas analyzed in order to better understand the functioning of neural networks. Also, the latest advances in neuroscience have revealed the existence of different brain activity in the learning process that can be highlighted through the use of non-invasive, innocuous, low-cost and easy-access techniques such as, among others, the evoked potentials that can help to detect early possible neuro-developmental difficulties for their subsequent assessment and cure. From the study of the amplitudes and latencies of the evoked potentials, it is possible to detect brain alterations in the learning process specifically in dyscalculia, to achieve specific corrective measures for the application of personalized psycho pedagogical plans that allow obtaining an optimal integral development of the affected people.

Keywords: dyscalculia, neurodevelopment, evoked potentials, Learning disabilities, neural networks

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Authors: Seema Dhariwal, Kiran Maan, Ruchi Baghel, Apoorva Sharma, Poonam Rana

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Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is defined as the temporary or permanent alteration in brain function and pathology caused by an external mechanical force. It represents the leading cause of mortality and morbidity among children and youth individuals. Various models of TBI in rodents have been developed in the laboratory to mimic the scenario of injury. Blast overpressure injury is common among civilians and military personnel, followed by accidents or explosive devices. In addition to this, the lateral Controlled cortical impact (CCI) model mimics the blunt, penetrating injury. Method: In the present study, we have developed two different mild TBI models using blast and CCI injury. In the blast model, helium gas was used to create an overpressure of 130 kPa (±5) via a shock tube, and CCI injury was induced with an impact depth of 1.5mm to create diffusive and focal injury, respectively. C57BL/6J male mice (10-12 weeks) were divided into three groups: (1) control, (2) Blast treated, (3) CCI treated, and were exposed to different injury models. Serum was collected on Day1 and day7, followed by biphasic extraction using MTBE/Methanol/Water. Prepared samples were separated on Charged Surface Hybrid (CSH) C18 column and acquired on UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS using ESI probe with inhouse optimized parameters and method. MS peak list was generated using Markerview TM. Data were normalized, Pareto-scaled, and log-transformed, followed by multivariate and univariate analysis in metaboanalyst. Result and discussion: Untargeted profiling of lipids generated extensive data features, which were annotated through LIPID MAPS® based on their m/z and were further confirmed based on their fragment pattern by LipidBlast. There is the final annotation of 269 features in the positive and 182 features in the negative mode of ionization. PCA and PLS-DA score plots showed clear segregation of injury groups to controls. Among various lipids in mild blast and CCI, five lipids (Glycerophospholipids {PC 30:2, PE O-33:3, PG 28:3;O3 and PS 36:1 } and fatty acyl { FA 21:3;O2}) were significantly altered in both injury groups at Day 1 and Day 7, and also had VIP score >1. Pathway analysis by Biopan has also shown hampered synthesis of Glycerolipids and Glycerophospholipiods, which coincides with earlier reports. It could be a direct result of alteration in the Acetylcholine signaling pathway in response to TBI. Understanding the role of a specific class of lipid metabolism, regulation and transport could be beneficial to TBI research since it could provide new targets and determine the best therapeutic intervention. This study demonstrates the potential lipid biomarkers which can be used for injury severity diagnosis and identification irrespective of injury type (diffusive or focal).

Keywords: LipidBlast, lipidomic biomarker, LIPID MAPS®, TBI

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Authors: Ahmad Aslizadeh, Farid Ghaderi

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Mapping organizational knowledge is an innovative concept and useful instrument of representation, capturing and visualization of implicit and explicit knowledge. There are a diversity of methods, instruments and techniques presented by different researchers following mapping organizational knowledge to reach determined goals. Implicating of these methods, it is necessary to know their exigencies and conditions in which those can be used. Integrating identified methods of knowledge mapping and comparing them would help knowledge managers to select the appropriate methods. This research conducted to presenting a model and framework to map organizational knowledge. At first, knowledge maps, their applications and necessity are introduced because of extracting comparative framework and detection of their structure. At the next step techniques of researchers such as Eppler, Kim, Egbu, Tandukar and Ebner as knowledge mapping models are presented and surveyed. Finally, they compare and a superior model would be introduced.

Keywords: knowledge mapping, knowledge management, comparative study, business and management

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Authors: Assel Jaxylykova, Alexnder Pak

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This study utilized a Self-Organizing Map (SOM) for unsupervised learning on the CONLL-2003 dataset for Named Entity Recognition (NER). The process involved encoding words into 300-dimensional vectors using FastText. These vectors were input into a SOM grid, where training adjusted node weights to minimize distances. The SOM provided a topological representation for identifying and clustering named entities, demonstrating its efficacy without labeled examples. Results showed an F1-measure of 0.86, highlighting SOM's viability. Although some methods achieve higher F1 measures, SOM eliminates the need for labeled data, offering a scalable and efficient alternative. The SOM's ability to uncover hidden patterns provides insights that could enhance existing supervised methods. Further investigation into potential limitations and optimization strategies is suggested to maximize benefits.

Keywords: named entity recognition, natural language processing, self-organizing map, CONLL-2003, semantics

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Authors: Stella Y. Erinosho

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In an attempt to impact on girls’ interest in science, an instructional package on ‘Learn Science by Doing (LSD)’ was developed to support science teachers in teaching integrated science at the junior secondary level in Nigeria. LSD provides an instructional framework aimed at actively engaging girls in beginners’ science through activities that are discovery-oriented and allow for experiential learning. The goal of this study was to show the impact of application of LSD on girls’ performance and interest in science. The major hypothesis that was tested in the study was that students would exhibit higher learning outcomes (achievement and attitude) in science as effect of exposure to LSD instructional package. A quasi-experimental design was adopted, incorporating four all-girls schools. Three of the schools (comprising six classes) were randomly designated as experimental and one as the control. The sample comprised 357 girls (275 experimental and 82 control) and nine science teachers drawn from the experimental schools. The questionnaire was designed to gather data on students’ background characteristics and their attitude toward science while the cognitive outcomes were measured using tests, both within a group and between groups, the girls who had exposure to LSD exhibited improved cognitive outcomes and more positive attitude towards science compared with those who had conventional teaching. The data are consistent with previous studies indicating that interactive learning activities increase student performance and interest.

Keywords: active learning, school science, teaching and learning, Nigeria

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