The holobiont mind: A bridge between 4E cognition and the microbiome

All life on earth is intrinsically linked. At the very foundation of every evolutionary interaction are microorganisms, integral components in the composition of both organisms and ecosystems. The available data and this perspective on the order of life challenge the traditional conception of monogenetic biological individuals, suggesting living beings are actually composite multi-species complexes: holobionts. In the present article, we introduce our perspective on the concept of the holobiont mind, a biogenic conception of cognition compatible with the 4E approach and the holobiont theory. We furthermore expand on the idea of the mind as the emerging product of multi-genomic morphology of a composite animal-agent, in ever-changing interaction with its ecological niche. We thus briefly review recent evidence on the brain–gut–microbiome axis and the Microbiome of the Built Environment in order to provide a bridge between the Holobiont Mind and the 4E approach to Cognition, two complementary lines of evidence that have not been linked before, opening novel venues for research with direct impact on health and disease.

Sequence Model based Cloudburst Prediction for the Indian State of Uttarakhand

Predicting the phenomenon of cloudburst has been a larger than life challenge to many weather and rain scientists. The very nature of cloudburst occurrence itself complicates the prediction of cloudburst. Since, cloudburst downpour occurs over a short span of time and is confined to very narrow geographic location, it is highly difficult for weather scientists to make any cloudburst predictions. In this work, the authors propose a cloudburst prediction model that leverages deep learning techniques to predict the occurrence of cloudburst in a location. The authors have collected the data pertaining to the cloudburst events that have occurred in the Indian State of Uttarakhand over the past decade and developed the model. Experiments were conducted using time series sequence models namely Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU). Predictive Power Score (PPS) has been used to extract the essential features that are fed as input to these sequence models. The performance of sequence models has been discussed in terms of loss function and accuracy and the results are promising for GRU based model in comparison with other sequence models.

Classifying Multilingual Text in Quality Assurance

Machine learning systems play an important role in helping and assisting engineers in their daily activities. Many jobs can now be automated, and one of them is in handling and processing customers’ complaints before they could proceed with failure investigation. In this paper, we discuss a real-life challenge faced by the manufacturing engineers in a life science multinational company. This paper presents a step by step methodology of multilingual translation and multiclassification of Repair Codes. This solution will allow manufacturing engineers to take advantage of machine learning model to reduce the time taken to manually translate row by row and verify the Repair Codes in the file.

AN INDIVIDUAL’S PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY IN THE UNSTABLE WORLD

The article analyses theoretically the concept of psychological safety as it is understood in psychology and presents the empirical study of students-future psychologists’ feeling of psychological safety in terms of their propensity to risk and their psychological hardiness as a prerequisite for a personal ability to resist danger. It is stated that the problem of an individual’s psychological safety in the situation of quarantine isolation and COVID-2019 pandemic is especially actual, even comes to the fore and requires thorough analysis and careful study in the context of the current objective situation in Ukraine and the world. The need for safety and protection from various threats is an individual’s fundamental need, further self-development and self-realization depend on its satisfaction; but an average person begins to realize this fact only after losing a sense of psychological safety. In scientific sources, psychological safety is more often seen as a means helping achieve / obtain something desired instead of understanding it as a goal. The interpretations of psychological safety, its structure, levels and factors supporting it presented by different scientists and its relation to informational-psychological security are analyzed. After the performed review of scientific psychological literature, the phenomenon of psychological safety was generalized as a complex, integral dynamic phenomenon; an individual’s state and feeling of being protected from external and internal threats; controllability of life events; an individual’s confidence in their ability to resist possible and existing threats; satisfaction of an individual’s basic needs and life as a whole for the further development and self-realization. We understand psychological safety as an individual’s sense of security in a safe world and a willingness to protect and restore that feeling when needed, resulting in the individual’s satisfaction with life. It is concluded that the studied students’ individual psychological hardiness with its components and the components of their sense of safety were not sufficiently developed. However, we can assume that psychological safety is more often experienced by people with developed psychological hardiness and its components: commitment to life; control over things happening in life, in particular, in stressful situations, and risk acceptance as a life challenge, as a result of which an individual can learn valuable life lessons helping them to become wiser for further self-realization.

Adaptive response to a future life challenge: consequences of early-life environmental complexity in dual-purpose chicks

Conditions in early life play profound and long-lasting effects on the welfare and adaptability to stress of chickens. This study aimed to explore the hypothesis that the provision of environmental complexity in early life improves birds’ adaptive plasticity and ability to cope with a challenge later in life. It also tried to investigate the effect of the gut-brain axis by measuring behavior, stress hormone, gene expression, and gut microbiota. One-day-old chicks were split into 3 groups: (1) a barren environment (without enrichment items) group (BG, n = 40), (2) a litter materials group (LG, n = 40), and (3) a perches with litter materials group (PLG, n = 40). Then, enrichment items were removed and simulated as an environmental challenge at 31 to 53 d of age. Birds were subjected to a predator test at 42 d of age. In the environmental challenge, when compared with LG, PLG birds were characterized by decreased fearfulness, lower plasma corticosterone, improved gut microbial functions, lower relative mRNA expression of GR, and elevated mRNA expressions of stress-related genes CRH, BDNF, and NR2A in the hypothalamus (all P < 0.05). Unexpectedly, the opposite was true for the LG birds when compared with the BG (P < 0.05). Decreased plasma corticosterone and fearfulness were accompanied by altered hypothalamic gene mRNA expressions of BDNF, NR2A, GR, and CRH through the HPA axis in response to altered gut microbial compositions and functions. The findings suggest that gut microbiota may integrate fearfulness, plasma corticosterone, and gene expression in the hypothalamus to provide an insight into the gut-brain axis in chicks. In conclusion, having access to both perches and litter materials in early life allowed birds to cope better with a future challenge. Birds in perches and litter materials environment may have optimal development and adaptive plasticity through the gut-brain axis.

Ambient seismic noise suppression in COST action G2Net

<p>The analysis of low-frequency gravitational waves (GW) data is a crucial mission of GW science and the performance of Earth-based GW detectors is largely influenced by ability of combating the low-frequency ambient seismic noise and other seismic influences. This tasks require multidisciplinary research in the fields of seismic sensing, signal processing, robotics, machine learning and mathematical modeling.<br><br>In practice, this kind of research is conducted by large teams of researchers with different expertise, so that project management emerges as an important real life challenge in the projects for acquisition, processing and interpretation of seismic data from GW detector site. A prominent example that successfully deals with this aspect could be observed in the COST Action G2Net (CA17137 - A network for Gravitational Waves, Geophysics and Machine Learning) and its seismic research group, which counts more than 30 members. </p><div>In this talk we will review the structure of the group, present the goals and recent activities of the group, and present new methods for combating the seismic influences at GW detector site that will be developed and applied within this collaboration.</div><div> <p> </p> <p>This publication is based upon work from CA17137 - A network for Gravitational Waves, Geophysics and Machine Learning, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).</p> </div>

Developing Sustainability Mindset through Experiential Learning Spiritual Development Phases in Business School

This paper aims to examine how experiential learning spiritual development programs have developed a sustainability mindset in Business School. In this paper, a sustainability mindset is embedded in the students' lifestyle through spiritual development experiential learning phases. By integrating the head, hands and heart students are asked to conduct real-world projects. The curriculum offers an opportunity for students to develop cognitive, emotional and spiritual intelligence simultaneously while completing their school projects. At Sekolah Tinggi Manajemen IPMI (IPMI School of Management) the journey begins by students designing their Life Map, in which students are invited tocreate their vision with theassumption that they can freely pursue their dreams. The real-life challenge begins when they create their own Business as aForce of Good project in which they have to plan and run a proitable business which answers at leastoneof theSustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a minimum amount of investment. This paper shows that students after engaging through the transformational spiritual development experiences have shifted toward the sustainability mindset. Students are now committed to support proitable businesses with social and environmental impact as a force of good.