The Specification of Air-to-Air Combat Tactics Using UML Sequence Diagram

Air force air-to-air combat tactics are occurring at a high speed in three-dimensional space. The specification of the tactics requires dealing with a quite amount of information, which makes it a challenge to accurately describe the maneuvering procedure of the tactics. The specification of air-to-air tactics using natural languages is not suitable because of the intrinsic ambiguity of natural languages. Therefore, this paper proposes an approach of using UML Sequence Diagram to describe air-to-air combat tactics. Since the current Sequence Diagram notation is not sufficient to express all aspects of the tactics, we extend the syntax of the Sequence Diagram to accommodate the required features of air-to-air combat tactics. We evaluate the applicability of the extended Sequence Diagram to air-to-air combat tactics using a case example, that is the manned-unmanned teaming combat tactic. The result shows that Sequence Diagram specification is more advantageous than natural language specification in terms of readability, conciseness, and accuracy. However, the expressiveness of the Sequence Diagram is evaluated to be less powerful than natural language, requiring further study to address this issue.

Autism and Social Interaction: A Discursive Psychological Study

<p><b>In psychological research, autistic people are generally characterised as possessing disordered social cognition and embodiment in comparison to non-autistic people. </b></p> <p>Specifically, a deficit in Theory of Mind (the capacity to think about other people’s mental states in order to understand and predict their behaviour) and altered tactile sensation have been proposed as some significant psychological differences present in autism. Autistic people are characterised as experiencing social interactional difficulties that impact social-emotional reciprocity. Examples of such impact include struggling to approach others to interact or to make personal or relevant contributions to an interaction.</p> <p>While there is a substantial literature on the cognitive properties of autistic individuals compared to non-autistic individuals and how these impact social psychological phenomena, there is considerably less research that analyses autistic people in their own right as social agents in naturally-occurring, everyday settings. As well, there is a challenge to the ideology behind deficit-oriented frameworks of autism in the form of the neurodiversity movement. This thesis draws on ethnomethodology, discursive psychology, and conversation analysis to contribute to both the naturalistic study of autistic people in social interaction and the development of positive, competence-oriented, and ecological approaches to autism. This will be achieved by analysing the social action, as produced in talk and with the body, of autistic children in interaction with their family members in their homes. </p> <p>Ten hours of video recordings were collected in the homes of four volunteer families with at least one autistic child member. Recordings were made by the families themselves of the mundane domestic activities they engaged in, including episodes of cooking and mealtimes, members playing together, preparing for school, and discussing the day’s activities. After detailed transcription, instances of the children providing accounts for their own behaviour and embraces (or resistance to them) were collected for and became the focus of detailed analysis. An extended sequence constituting a common parenting activity (directing a child to do something) was also selected. This research takes the domains of Theory of Mind and tactile sensation that are prominent within psychological research on autism and treats them as social interactional accomplishments. </p> <p>The first empirical chapter examines how children accounted for their own behaviour. </p> <p>It found that the children’s accounts were oriented toward the displayed expectancies and characterisations of the child and their conduct either in responding to first pair parts (e.g., resisting suggestions with an embedded presumption of the child’s knowledge), or in launching their own first action (e.g., requesting more food). These accounts constitute concern for how the children’s interactants could, or do, treat them in response to their behaviour, accomplishing Theory of Mind embedded in their everyday action.</p> <p>With respect to tactile sensation, the second empirical chapter analyses embraces. </p> <p>Embraces occurred within and between a variety of other activities. Analyses showed how both children and parents initiated embraces and many were accomplished as non-problematic by the children. Participants arranged their bodies such that the embrace was coordinated with the talk and ongoing action, and utilised both verbal and embodied resources to initiate and terminate. Children prioritised their ongoing actions, treating some embraces or embrace initiations as interruptive by avoiding, escaping or otherwise misaligning with them. </p> <p>The third empirical chapter demonstrates how one family’s extended sequence of action directing their child to use the bathroom before bedtime was comprised of a variety of different relational activities. In the process of managing the larger project of the directive, parent and child negotiated complex elements of their relationship including issues of power and responsibility, shared knowledge and experiences, and expectations of group membership. </p> <p>This thesis offers a critical perspective on the conceptualisation of autism in psychology. It grounds this alternative view of autism based on an empirical analysis of how the autistic children and their family members in the interactions analysed manage complex social psychological matters in the production of their social action. It expands upon discursive psychological research on the accomplishment of social cognition as action produced within talk-in-interaction. It also exemplifies a direction a neurodiversity-sensitive psychology of social action could take and identifies ways that this can be further developed.</p>

Autism and Social Interaction: A Discursive Psychological Study

<p><b>In psychological research, autistic people are generally characterised as possessing disordered social cognition and embodiment in comparison to non-autistic people. </b></p> <p>Specifically, a deficit in Theory of Mind (the capacity to think about other people’s mental states in order to understand and predict their behaviour) and altered tactile sensation have been proposed as some significant psychological differences present in autism. Autistic people are characterised as experiencing social interactional difficulties that impact social-emotional reciprocity. Examples of such impact include struggling to approach others to interact or to make personal or relevant contributions to an interaction.</p> <p>While there is a substantial literature on the cognitive properties of autistic individuals compared to non-autistic individuals and how these impact social psychological phenomena, there is considerably less research that analyses autistic people in their own right as social agents in naturally-occurring, everyday settings. As well, there is a challenge to the ideology behind deficit-oriented frameworks of autism in the form of the neurodiversity movement. This thesis draws on ethnomethodology, discursive psychology, and conversation analysis to contribute to both the naturalistic study of autistic people in social interaction and the development of positive, competence-oriented, and ecological approaches to autism. This will be achieved by analysing the social action, as produced in talk and with the body, of autistic children in interaction with their family members in their homes. </p> <p>Ten hours of video recordings were collected in the homes of four volunteer families with at least one autistic child member. Recordings were made by the families themselves of the mundane domestic activities they engaged in, including episodes of cooking and mealtimes, members playing together, preparing for school, and discussing the day’s activities. After detailed transcription, instances of the children providing accounts for their own behaviour and embraces (or resistance to them) were collected for and became the focus of detailed analysis. An extended sequence constituting a common parenting activity (directing a child to do something) was also selected. This research takes the domains of Theory of Mind and tactile sensation that are prominent within psychological research on autism and treats them as social interactional accomplishments. </p> <p>The first empirical chapter examines how children accounted for their own behaviour. </p> <p>It found that the children’s accounts were oriented toward the displayed expectancies and characterisations of the child and their conduct either in responding to first pair parts (e.g., resisting suggestions with an embedded presumption of the child’s knowledge), or in launching their own first action (e.g., requesting more food). These accounts constitute concern for how the children’s interactants could, or do, treat them in response to their behaviour, accomplishing Theory of Mind embedded in their everyday action.</p> <p>With respect to tactile sensation, the second empirical chapter analyses embraces. </p> <p>Embraces occurred within and between a variety of other activities. Analyses showed how both children and parents initiated embraces and many were accomplished as non-problematic by the children. Participants arranged their bodies such that the embrace was coordinated with the talk and ongoing action, and utilised both verbal and embodied resources to initiate and terminate. Children prioritised their ongoing actions, treating some embraces or embrace initiations as interruptive by avoiding, escaping or otherwise misaligning with them. </p> <p>The third empirical chapter demonstrates how one family’s extended sequence of action directing their child to use the bathroom before bedtime was comprised of a variety of different relational activities. In the process of managing the larger project of the directive, parent and child negotiated complex elements of their relationship including issues of power and responsibility, shared knowledge and experiences, and expectations of group membership. </p> <p>This thesis offers a critical perspective on the conceptualisation of autism in psychology. It grounds this alternative view of autism based on an empirical analysis of how the autistic children and their family members in the interactions analysed manage complex social psychological matters in the production of their social action. It expands upon discursive psychological research on the accomplishment of social cognition as action produced within talk-in-interaction. It also exemplifies a direction a neurodiversity-sensitive psychology of social action could take and identifies ways that this can be further developed.</p>

A systematic evaluation of the design, orientation, and sequence context dependencies of massively parallel reporter assays

Massively parallel reporter assays (MPRAs) functionally screen thousands of sequences for regulatory activity in parallel. Here, we further develop and apply a novel method to assemble and functionally test libraries of greater than 2000 of the same putative enhancers as 192-mers, 354-mers, and 678-mers. We achieved a yield of 95% for 354-mers and 84% for 678-mers. Importantly, we observe surprisingly large differences in functional activity. This work provides a framework for the experimental design of high-throughput reporter assays, suggesting that the extended sequence context of tested elements, and to a lesser degree the precise assay, influence MPRA results.

A kinetic model improves off-target predictions and reveals the physical basis of SpCas9 fidelity

The S. pyogenes (Sp) Cas9 endonuclease is an important gene-editing tool. SpCas9 is directed to target sites via a single guide RNA (sgRNA). However, SpCas9 also binds and cleaves genomic off-target sites that are partially matched to the sgRNA. Here, we report a microscopic kinetic model that simultaneously captures binding and cleavage dynamics for SpCas9 and Sp-dCas9 in free-energy terms. This model not only outperforms state-of-the-art off-target prediction tools, but also details how Sp-Cas9’s structure-function relation manifests itself in binding and cleavage dynamics. Based on the biophysical parameters we extract, our model predicts SpCas9’s open, intermediate, and closed complex configurations and indicates that R-loop progression is tightly coupled with structural changes in the targeting complex. We show that SpCas9 targeting kinetics are tuned for extended sequence specificity while maintaining on-target efficiency. Our extensible approach can characterize any CRISPR-Cas nuclease – benchmarking natural and future high-fidelity variants against SpCas9; elucidating determinants of CRISPR fidelity; and revealing pathways to increased specificity and efficiency in engineered systems.

A New Pseudo-Spectral Method Using the Discrete Cosine Transform

The pseudo-spectral (PS) method on the basis of the Fourier transform is a numerical method for estimating derivatives. Generally, the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) is used when implementing the PS method. However, when the values on both sides of the sequences differ significantly, oscillatory approximations around both sides appear due to the periodicity resulting from the DFT. To address this problem, we propose a new PS method based on symmetric extension. We mathematically derive the proposed method using the discrete cosine transform (DCT) in the forward transform from the relation between DFT and DCT. DCT allows a sequence to function as a symmetrically extended sequence and estimates derivatives in the transformed domain. The superior performance of the proposed method is demonstrated through image interpolation. Potential applications of the proposed method are numerical simulations using the Fourier based PS method in many fields such as fluid dynamics, meteorology, and geophysics.

Labour market attachment among parents and self-rated health of their offspring: an intergenerational study

Background Unemployment influences the individual’s health, whether this effect passes through generations is less studied. The aim of this intergenerational study was to investigate whether parents’ labour market attachment (LMA) were associated with self-rated health (SRH) among adolescents using preceding labour market events. Methods The study was performed using questionnaire data from the Danish Future Occupation of Children and Adolescents cohort (the FOCA cohort) of 13 100 adolescents (mean age 15.8 years) and their accompanying parents identified through registers. Adolescents’ SRH was measured using one item from SF-36. Information on parents’ LMA was obtained from a national register, analyzed on a weekly basis in a 5-year period before the adolescents completed the questionnaire. An integration indicator was calculated from an initial sequence analysis to determine how well the parents were integrated in the labour market. The association between the adolescents’ SRH and parents’ LMA was examined by logistic regression and an extended sequence analysis stratified on adolescents’ SRH. Results Totally, 29.1% of the adolescents reported moderate SRH. The adjusted odds ratios (OR) of moderate SRH was higher among adolescents of parents with low labour market integration (OR: 1.5 95% CI: 1.3–1.6 for fathers and OR: 1.4 95% CI: 1.2–1.5 for mothers). Also, adolescents with moderate SRH had parents who were less integrated in the labour market and had more weeks on non-employment benefits compared with the adolescents, who reported high SRH. Conclusions Unstable LMA among parents affected SRH among their adolescent children, indicating a negative effect of labour market marginalization across generations.

Research on Grid Scroll Chaotic Extended Sequence Algorithm and Its Circuit Implementation for F-OFDM System

High peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), a main problem of 5G Filtered-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (F-OFDM) system, seriously affects the system’s transmission efficiency. Aiming at the shortcomings of the traditional selective mapping (SLM) algorithm, the grid scroll chaotic extended sequence (GSCES) algorithm is proposed to solve the high PAPR problem. The proposed grid multiscroll chaotic maps are used as random phase sequence vectors instead of the traditional pseudo random sequence, which provide a large number of random sequences with good correlation characteristics, random characteristics, and high security. The proposed random phase sequence vectors can meet the needs of 5G mass connections. The original input signals are divided into real part and imaginary part, which are, respectively, dot produced with the proposed grid multiscroll chaotic maps. The numerical simulation results show that the proposed GSCES algorithm effectively increases the number of candidate sequences, reduces the PAPR values, and improves the transmission efficiency and security. Moreover, the hardware experimental results produce at 2 × 2 × 2-grid multiscroll chaotic attractor, which further proves the physical realization of the proposed system. The proposed schemes have a broad application prospect in 5G multicarrier modulation technology.

Intragenomic variability and extended sequence patterns in the mutational signature of ultraviolet light

Mutational signatures can reveal properties of underlying mutational processes and are important when assessing signals of selection in cancer. Here, we describe the sequence characteristics of mutations induced by ultraviolet (UV) light, a major mutagen in several human cancers, in terms of extended (longer than trinucleotide) patterns as well as variability of the signature across chromatin states. Promoter regions display a distinct UV signature with reduced TCG > TTG transitions, and genome-wide mapping of UVB-induced DNA photoproducts (pyrimidine dimers) showed that this may be explained by decreased damage formation at hypomethylated promoter CpG sites. Further, an extended signature model encompassing additional information from longer contextual patterns improves modeling of UV mutations, which may enhance discrimination between drivers and passenger events. Our study presents a refined picture of the UV signature and underscores that the characteristics of a single mutational process may vary across the genome.