A Case Study of Floating Offshore Super-Long Steel Pipeline Combing with Field Monitoring

How to control deformation and avoid resonance is the key to ensuring the safety of the super-long pipeline when it is floating in the sea. Based on the deformation warning value of pipeline prototype composite material obtained from laboratory tests, the raw water pipeline project in Tong’an Xiamen adopts wireless communication equipment to transmit data, supplemented by aerial photography technology to monitor and feedback the strain and vibration during the dynamic construction of long-distance pipeline floating transportation. Combined with dynamic construction, this monitoring method avoids excessive deformation and resonance of the steel pipeline during floating transportation, and prevents the destruction of the anticorrosive coating. The airtightness test after completion shows that the whole pipeline meets the acceptance requirements. The monitoring results show that the strain at the bent position of the pipeline is large in the process of floating transportation, and the jacking speed and position of the tugboats have an important influence on the deformation of the pipeline. The same type of project should focus on these aspects and timely feedback monitoring data. At the same time, the study also provides detailed strain, modal analysis and effective monitoring technology for the safety of offshore steel pipeline floating transportation.

A win-win situation: Does familiarity with a social robot modulate feedback monitoring and learning?

Social species rely on the ability to modulate feedback-monitoring in social contexts to adjust one’s actions and obtain desired outcomes. When being awarded positive outcomes during a gambling task, feedback-monitoring is attenuated when strangers are rewarded, as less value is assigned to the awarded outcome. This difference in feedback-monitoring can be indexed by an event-related potential (ERP) component known as the Reward Positivity (RewP), whose amplitude is enhanced when receiving positive feedback. While the degree of familiarity influences the RewP, little is known about how the RewP and reinforcement learning are affected when gambling on behalf of familiar versus nonfamiliar agents, such as robots. This question becomes increasingly important given that robots may be used as teachers and/or social companions in the near future, with whom children and adults will interact with for short or long periods of time. In the present study, we examined whether feedback-monitoring when gambling on behalf of oneself compared with a robot is impacted by whether participants have familiarized themselves with the robot before the task. We expected enhanced RewP amplitude for self versus other for those who did not familiarize with the robot and that self–other differences in the RewP would be attenuated for those who familiarized with the robot. Instead, we observed that the RewP was larger when familiarization with the robot occurred, which corresponded to overall worse learning outcomes. We additionally observed an enhanced P3 effect for the high-familiarity condition, which suggests an increased motivation to reward. These findings suggest that familiarization with robots may cause a positive motivational effect, which positively affects RewP amplitudes, but interferes with learning.

Flexibility in using self-regulatory strategies to manage self-control conflicts: The role of metacognitive knowledge, strategy repertoire, and feedback monitoring

For regulating emotion, it has been shown that people benefit from being flexible in their use of emotion regulation strategies. In the current study, we built on research focused on regulatory flexibility with respect to emotions to investigate flexibility in the use of self-regulatory strategies to resolve daily self-control conflicts. We investigated three components of flexibility: (1) metacognitive knowledge, (2) strategy repertoire, and (3) feedback monitoring. In a 10-day experience sampling study, 226 participants reported whether they had, within the past hour, experienced a self-control conflict of initiating an aversive activity, persisting in it, or inhibiting an unwanted impulse in response to a temptation. Results support the hypothesis that higher levels of all three components of flexibility are associated with higher levels of success in managing daily self-control conflicts, except for strategy repertoire and feedback monitoring in conflicts of persistence. Results also support the hypothesis that higher levels of trait self-control are associated with higher levels of metacognitive knowledge and feedback monitoring for conflicts of initiation, but not for conflicts of persistence and inhibition. We found no evidence of an association between trait self-control and strategy repertoire. These findings demonstrate the importance of flexible strategy use during daily self-control conflicts.

Does over-reliance on auditory feedback cause disfluency? An fMRI study of induced fluency in people who stutter

This study tested the idea that stuttering is caused by over-reliance on auditory feedback. The theory is motivated by the observation that many fluency-inducing situations, such as synchronised speech and masked speech, alter or obscure the talker’s feedback. Typical speakers show ‘speaking-induced suppression’ of neural activation in superior temporal gyrus (STG) during self-produced vocalisation, compared to listening to recorded speech. If people who stutter over-attend to auditory feedback, they may lack this suppression response. In a 1.5T fMRI scanner, people who stutter spoke in synchrony with an experimenter, in synchrony with a recording, on their own, in noise, listened to the experimenter speaking and read silently. Behavioural testing outside the scanner demonstrated that synchronising with another talker resulted in a marked increase in fluency regardless of baseline stuttering severity. In the scanner, participants stuttered most when they spoke alone, and least when they synchronised with a live talker. There was no reduction in STG activity in the Speak Alone condition, when participants stuttered most. There was also strong activity in STG in response to the two synchronised speech conditions, when participants stuttered least, suggesting that either stuttering does not result from over-reliance on feedback, or that the STG activation seen here does not reflect speech feedback monitoring. We discuss this result with reference to neural responses seen in the typical population.

Flexibility in Using Self-Regulatory Strategies to Manage Self-Control Conflicts: The Role of Metacognitive Knowledge, Strategy Repertoire, and Feedback Monitoring

For regulating emotion, it has been shown that people benefit from being flexible in their use of emotion regulation strategies. In the current study, we built on research focused on regulatory flexibility with respect to emotions to investigate flexibility in the use of self-regulatory strategies to resolve daily self-control conflicts. We investigated three components of flexibility: (1) metacognitive knowledge, (2) strategy repertoire, and (3) feedback monitoring. In a 10-day experience sampling study, 226 participants reported whether they had, within the past hour, experienced a self-control conflict of initiating an aversive activity, persisting in it, or inhibiting an unwanted impulse in response to a temptation. Results support the hypothesis that higher levels of all three components of flexibility are associated with higher levels of success in managing daily self-control conflicts, except for strategy repertoire and feedback monitoring in conflicts of persistence. Results also support the hypothesis that higher levels of trait self-control are associated with higher levels of metacognitive knowledge and feedback monitoring for conflicts of initiation, but not for conflicts of persistence and inhibition. We found no evidence of an association between trait self-control and strategy repertoire. These findings demonstrate the importance of flexible strategy use during daily self-control conflicts.