Delusional thinking and action binding in healthy individuals

Action binding is the effect that the perceived time of an action is shifted towards the action related feedback. A much larger action binding effect in schizophrenia compared to normal controls has been shown, which might be due to positive symptoms like delusions. Here we investigated the relationship between delusional thinking and action binding in healthy individuals, predicting a positive correlation between them. The action binding effect was evaluated by comparing the perceived time of a keypress between an operant (keypress triggering a sound) and a baseline condition (keypress alone), with a novel testing method that massively improved the precision of the subjective timing measurement. A positive correlation was found between the tendency of delusional thinking (measured by the 21-item Peters et al. delusions inventory) and action binding across participants after controlling for the effect of testing order between operant and baseline conditions. The results indicate that delusional thinking in particular influences action time perception and support the notion of a continuous distribution of schizotypal traits with normal controls at one end and clinical patients at the other end.

Advantages and Requirements in Time Resolving Tracking for Astroparticle Experiments in Space

A large-area, solid-state detector with single-hit precision timing measurement will enable several breakthrough experimental advances for the direct measurement of particles in space. Silicon microstrip detectors are the most promising candidate technology to instrument the large areas of the next-generation astroparticle space borne detectors that could meet the limitations on power consumption required by operations in space. We overview the novel experimental opportunities that could be enabled by the introduction of the timing measurement, concurrent with the accurate spatial and charge measurement, in Silicon microstrip tracking detectors, and we discuss the technological solutions and their readiness to enable the operations of large-area Silicon microstrip timing detectors in space.

Comparison of 2.4 GHz WiFi FTM- and RSSI-Based Indoor Positioning Methods in Realistic Scenarios

With the addition of the Fine Timing Measurement (FTM) protocol in IEEE 802.11-2016, a promising sensor for smartphone-based indoor positioning systems was introduced. FTM enables a Wi-Fi device to estimate the distance to a second device based on the propagation time of the signal. Recently, FTM has gotten more attention from the scientific community as more compatible devices become available. Due to the claimed robustness and accuracy, FTM is a promising addition to the often used Received Signal Strength Indication (RSSI). In this work, we evaluate FTM on the 2.4 GHz band with 20 MHz channel bandwidth in the context of realistic indoor positioning scenarios. For this purpose, we deploy a least-squares estimation method, a probabilistic positioning approach and a simplistic particle filter implementation. Each method is evaluated using FTM and RSSI separately to show the difference of the techniques. Our results show that, although FTM achieves smaller positioning errors compared to RSSI, its error behavior is similar to RSSI. Furthermore, we demonstrate that an empirically optimized correction value for FTM is required to account for the environment. This correction value can reduce the positioning error significantly.

Software Product Validation of Body Controller ECU’s using Intelligent Automation Methods

In Continental the, Electronic Control Unit (ECU’s) software consists of 2 parts, the basic software which is the generic part and the application software which does the product specific functionality. The project specific functionality depends upon the product type, like Body domain controller, immobilizer etc. Before the ECU is going to mass production, the controller has to be validated i.e., software and hardware. The main reason is to ensure, that once the ECU is fitted to the vehicle and there is a recall for ECU, it involves additional cost to the organization. The validation of the software includes, checking of the micro controller input, outputs, peripheral drivers, the initialization of the drivers, the timing measurement of the different components. All the parameters are controlled by the generic and application specific modules, and can be configured via configuration tool, manual configuration etc. Since the SW modules are complex and huge, so its need to perform validation of the SW modules manually. This is time consuming process, as it involves checking many c file, configuration files etc. The proposal is to automate the process using Python programming, which interacts with the C code, configuration files, debugger, interacting with the ECU’s peripherals, components and validate the Software parameters before going for series production. In the proposed method the different steps can be automated for different micro-controllers i.e., Renesas RL78 and RH850 used in the ECU’s and different architecture i.e., AUTOSAR and NON-AUTOSAR will be considered and the results will be compared with the manual validation effort and accuracy.