Research on Efficacy Evaluation of Large-Scale Networked Intelligent Perception System

Under the smart engineering system (SES), there is a huge demand for evaluating the efficacy of a large-scale networked intelligent perception system (IPS). Considering the large-scale, distributed, and networked system characteristics and perception task demands, this paper proposes a conceptual system for IPS efficacy evaluation and, on this basis, designs the architecture of the efficacy evaluation system. A networked IPS model is constructed based on domain ontology, an index system is quickly established for efficacy evaluation, the evaluation methods are assembled automatically, and adaptive real-time organization strategies are generated for networked perception based on efficacy estimate. After exploring these key technologies, a prototype system is created for the service-oriented integrated efficacy evaluation platform and used to verify and integrate research results. The research provides support for the efficacy evaluation theories and methods of large-scale networked IPS.

Caffeine and attentional control: improved and impaired performance in healthy older adults and Parkinson’s disease according to task demands

Introduction Caffeine is frequently consumed to boost goal-directed attention. These procognitive effects may occur due to the adenosine-mediated enhancement of monoamines, such as dopamine, after caffeine administration. As such, caffeine’s beneficial effects may be altered in conditions such as Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, whether caffeine improves cognition, and at what cost, has not been experimentally established in patients with neurodegenerative disease. Methods Single-dose trials to probe cognitive effects of caffeine are often confounded by short-term caffeine abstinence which conflates caffeine’s effects with treatment of withdrawal. Using a placebo controlled, blinded, randomised trial design, we assessed the effect of 100 mg of caffeine across well-established tasks (Choice reaction time, Stroop Task and Rapid Serial Visual Presentation Task; RSVP) that probe different aspects of attention in PD patients (n = 24) and controls (n = 44). Critically, participants withdrew from caffeine for a week prior to testing to eliminate the possibility that withdrawal reversal explained any cognitive benefit. Results Caffeine administration was found to reduce the overall number of errors in patients and controls on the Stroop (p = .018, η2p = .086) and Choice reaction time (p < . 0001, η2p = .588) tasks, but there was no specific effect of caffeine on ignoring irrelevant information in the Stroop task. On the RSVP task, caffeine improved dual item accuracy (p = .037) but impaired single item accuracy (p = .044). Across all tasks, there was little evidence that caffeine has different effects in PD participants and controls. Conclusion When removing withdrawal effects as a factor, we demonstrate caffeine has beneficial effects on selective attention but is a double-edge sword for visual temporal attention and would need careful targeting to be clinically useful.

EXPRESS: Task demands moderate the effect of emotion on attentional capture

The current experiment examined the effect of task demands on attention to emotional images. Eighty participants viewed pairs of images, with each pair consisting of an emotional (negative or positive) and a neutral image, or two neutral images. Participants’ eye movements were recorded during picture viewing, and participants were either asked 1) which picture contains more colour? (colour task), 2) are the images equally pleasant? (pleasantness task), 3) which picture do you prefer? (preference task), or 4) were given no task instructions (control task). Although the results did not suggest that emotional images strongly captured attention, emotional images were looked at earlier than neutral images. Importantly, the pattern of results were dependent upon the task instructions; whilst the preference and colour task conditions showed early attentional biases to emotional images, only positive images were looked at earlier in the pleasantness task condition, and no early attentional biases were observed in the control task. Moreover, total fixation duration was increased for positive images in the preference task condition, but not in the other task conditions. It was concluded that attention to emotional stimuli can be modified by the demands of the task during viewing. However, further research should consider additional factors, such as the cognitive load of the viewing tasks, and the content of the images used.

No Country for Non-Graduate Men: The Childish Roots of Adult Job Tasks \& Employment

Male employment has declined across advanced economies as non-graduate men found it increasingly difficult to gain jobs in the wake of technological change and globalisation. This has led to rising earnings and, subsequently, income inequality. Female employment, by contrast, has risen in this period. Previous work has shown changing job task demands explain this pattern - with declining manual tasks penalising men and rising non-routine tasks benefiting women. In this paper, I test whether gendered differences in childhood \&amp; adolescent cognitive, social, perseverance, and emotional-health skills can help explain why men are less adept at non-routine tasks using long-term longitudinal data from the United Kingdom. I find that childhood \&amp; adolescent skills have a significant effect on adult job tasks and employment outcomes. Greater cognitive and childhood emotional-health skills lead to people performing more high-pay analytical and interactive job tasks as adults. Greater cognitive and non-cognitive skills are also associated with higher adult employment levels. Indicative calculations show that gendered differences in these childhood and adolescent skills explain an economically significant decline in the analytical and interactive job tasks performed by non-graduate men as well as their employment rates.

LaRA 2: parallel and vectorized program for sequence–structure alignment of RNA sequences

Background The function of non-coding RNA sequences is largely determined by their spatial conformation, namely the secondary structure of the molecule, formed by Watson–Crick interactions between nucleotides. Hence, modern RNA alignment algorithms routinely take structural information into account. In order to discover yet unknown RNA families and infer their possible functions, the structural alignment of RNAs is an essential task. This task demands a lot of computational resources, especially for aligning many long sequences, and it therefore requires efficient algorithms that utilize modern hardware when available. A subset of the secondary structures contains overlapping interactions (called pseudoknots), which add additional complexity to the problem and are often ignored in available software. Results We present the SeqAn-based software LaRA 2 that is significantly faster than comparable software for accurate pairwise and multiple alignments of structured RNA sequences. In contrast to other programs our approach can handle arbitrary pseudoknots. As an improved re-implementation of the LaRA tool for structural alignments, LaRA 2 uses multi-threading and vectorization for parallel execution and a new heuristic for computing a lower boundary of the solution. Our algorithmic improvements yield a program that is up to 130 times faster than the previous version. Conclusions With LaRA 2 we provide a tool to analyse large sets of RNA secondary structures in relatively short time, based on structural alignment. The produced alignments can be used to derive structural motifs for the search in genomic databases.

Electrophysiological Signatures of Numerosity Encoding in a Delayed Match-to-Sample Task

The number of elements in a small set of items is appraised in a fast and exact manner, a phenomenon called subitizing. In contrast, humans provide imprecise responses when comparing larger numerosities, with decreasing precision as the number of elements increases. Estimation is thought to rely on a dedicated system for the approximate representation of numerosity. While previous behavioral and neuroimaging studies associate subitizing to a domain-general system related to object tracking and identification, the nature of small numerosity processing is still debated. We investigated the neural processing of numerosity across subitizing and estimation ranges by examining electrophysiological activity during the memory retention period in a delayed numerical match-to-sample task. We also assessed potential differences in the neural signature of numerical magnitude in a fully non-symbolic or cross-format comparison. In line with behavioral performance, we observed modulation of parietal-occipital neural activity as a function of numerosity that differed in two ranges, with distinctive neural signatures of small numerosities showing clear similarities with those observed in visuospatial working memory tasks. We also found differences in neural activity related to numerical information in anticipation of single vs. cross-format comparison, suggesting a top-down modulation of numerical processing. Finally, behavioral results revealed enhanced performance in the mixed-format conditions and a significant correlation between task performance and symbolic mathematical skills. Overall, we provide evidence for distinct mechanisms related to small and large numerosity and differences in numerical encoding based on task demands.

The Task Matters: A Scoping Review on Reading Comprehension Abilities in ADHD

Objective: A broad range of tasks have been used to classify individuals with ADHD with reading comprehension difficulties. However, the inconsistency in the literature warrants a scoping review of current knowledge about the relationship between ADHD diagnosis and reading comprehension ability. Method: A comprehensive search strategy was performed to identify relevant articles on the topic. Thirty-four articles met inclusion criteria for the current review. Results: The evidence as a whole suggests reading comprehension is impaired in ADHD. The most prominent effect was found in studies where participants retell or pick out central ideas in stories. On these tasks, participants with ADHD performed consistently worse than typically developing controls. However, some studies found that performance in ADHD improved when reading comprehension task demands were low. Conclusion: Results suggest that performance in ADHD depends on the way reading comprehension is measured and further guide future work clarifying why there are such discrepant findings across studies.

Effects of Task Demands on Postural Control in Children of Different Ages: A Cross-Sectional Study

This study evaluates the effect of dual tasks on balance during manipulation of visual information, the base of support, and cognitive tasks in 7–12-year-old children and adults. An equal number of girls (210) and boys (210) were selected from the schools by the cluster random sampling method (within the 7–12 age groups). Twenty young adults were also selected. Postural sway (PS) was measured in the anterior–posterior (AP) and mediolateral (ML) directions using a force plate in eight standing positions, including standing with closed eyes versus standing with open eyes and standing with feet together versus on a single limb, under the interference of cognitive dual tasks (DT) or a single task (ST). PS was found to decrease with advancing age. PS was also greater in men than women in both AP and ML directions (p < 0.05). PS was greater in the 7–12-year-old participants compared to adults under the manipulation of the base of support (p < 0.05). However, PS increased in all participants regardless of their age while manipulating both the base of support and visual information (p < 0.05). Children (within the 9–12 years age range) and adults could keep their balance while performing basic tasks; however, children had difficulty in maintaining their balance with higher task demands.

Clustering analysis of movement kinematics in reinforcement learning

Reinforcement learning has been used as an experimental model of motor skill acquisition, where at times movements are successful and thus reinforced. One fundamental problem is to understand how humans select exploration over exploitation during learning. The decision could be influenced by factors such as task demands and reward availability. In this study, we applied a clustering algorithm to examine how a change in the accuracy requirements of a task affected the choice of exploration over exploitation. Participants made reaching movements to an unseen target using a planar robot arm and received reward after each successful movement. For one group of participants, the width of the hidden target decreased after every other training block. For a second group, it remained constant. The clustering algorithm was applied to the kinematic data to characterize motor learning on a trial-to-trial basis as a sequence of movements, each belonging to one of the identified clusters. By the end of learning, movement trajectories across all participants converged primarily to a single cluster with the greatest number of successful trials. Within this analysis framework, we defined exploration and exploitation as types of behaviour in which two successive trajectories belong to different or similar clusters, respectively. The frequency of each mode of behaviour was evaluated over the course learning. It was found that by reducing the target width, participants used a greater variety of different clusters and displayed more exploration than exploitation. Excessive exploration relative to exploitation was found to be detrimental to subsequent motor learning.

Effect of Heart Rate Reserve on Prefrontal Cortical Activation While Dual-Task Walking in Older Adults

Hypertension is considered a risk factor for cardiovascular health and non-amnestic cognitive impairment in older adults. While heart rate reserve (HRR) has been shown to be a risk factor for hypertension, how impaired HRR in older adults can lead to cognitive impairment is still unclear. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of HRR on prefrontal cortical (PFC) activation under varying dual-task demands in older adults. Twenty-eight older adults (50–82 years of age) were included in this study and divided into higher (n = 14) and lower (n = 14) HRR groups. Participants engaged in the cognitive task which was the Modified Stroop Color Word Test (MSCWT) on a self-paced treadmill while walking. Participants with higher HRR demonstrated increased PFC activation in comparison to lower HRR, even after controlling for covariates in analysis. Furthermore, as cognitive task difficulty increased (from neutral to congruent to incongruent to switching), PFC activation increased. In addition, there was a significant interaction between tasks and HRR group, with older adults with higher HRR demonstrating increases in PFC activation, faster gait speed, and increased accuracy, relative to those with lower HRR, when going from neutral to switching tasks. These results provide evidence of a relationship between HRR and prefrontal cortical activation and cognitive and physical performance, suggesting that HRR may serve as a biomarker for cognitive health of an older adult with or without cardiovascular risk.