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Newborn human brain identifies repeated auditory feature conjunctions of low sequential probability

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF NEUROSCIENCE, Issue 10 2004
Timo Ruusuvirta
Abstract Natural environments are usually composed of multiple sources for sounds. The sounds might physically differ from one another only as feature conjunctions, and several of them might occur repeatedly in the short term. Nevertheless, the detection of rare sounds requires the identification of the repeated ones. Adults have some limited ability to effortlessly identify repeated sounds in such acoustically complex environments, but the developmental onset of this finite ability is unknown. Sleeping newborn infants were presented with a repeated tone carrying six frequent (P = 0.15 each) and six rare (P ,0.017 each) conjunctions of its frequency, intensity and duration. Event-related potentials recorded from the infants' scalp were found to shift in amplitude towards positive polarity selectively in response to rare conjunctions. This finding suggests that humans are relatively hard-wired to preattentively identify repeated auditory feature conjunctions even when such conjunctions occur rarely among other similar ones. [source]

Relativistic effects in the optical response of HgSe by time-dependent density functionals theory

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, Issue 4-5 2001
P. L. de Boeij
Abstract We treat the dominant relativistic effects in the optical response properties of mercury selenide using time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT). The scalar relativistic effects have been included within the zeroth-order regular approximation (ZORA) in both the ground-state DFT calculations and in the time-dependent response calculations. Within this approximation the HgSe crystal is found to be a semimetal. In a previous study [J Chem Phys 2001, 114, 1860] we have shown that TDDFT/ZORA can be applied successfully to narrow-gap semiconductors, such as indium antimonide, that become semimetallic within the local density approximation when scalar relativistic effects are included. Results are given for the band structure, the static dielectric constant ,,, and the dielectric function ,(,) of HgSe, and these results are compared with the similar ones for InSb. We find considerably improved results for the dielectric function of HgSe when relativistic effects are included. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2001 [source]

Partial pole assignment for the vibrating system with aerodynamic effect

NUMERICAL LINEAR ALGEBRA WITH APPLICATIONS, Issue 1 2004
Wen-Wei Lin
Abstract The partial pole assignment (PPA) problem is the one of reassigning a few unwanted eigenvalues of a control system by feedback to suitably chosen ones, while keeping the remaining large number of eigenvalues unchanged. The problem naturally arises in modifying dynamical behaviour of the system. The PPA has been considered by several authors in the past for standard state,space systems and for quadratic matrix polynomials associated with second-order systems. In this paper, we consider the PPA for a cubic matrix polynomial arising from modelling of a vibrating system with aerodynamics effects and derive explicit formulas for feedback matrices in terms of the coefficient matrices of the polynomial. Our results generalize those of a quadratic matrix polynomial by Datta et al. (Linear Algebra Appl. 1997;257: 29) and is based on some new orthogonality relations for eigenvectors of the cubic matrix polynomial, which also generalize the similar ones reported in Datta et al. (Linear Algebra Appl. 1997;257: 29) for the symmetric definite quadratic pencil. Besides playing an important role in our solution for the PPA, these orthogonality relations are of independent interests, and believed to be an important contribution to linear algebra in its own right. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

An experimental analysis of ingestion rates in an omnivorous species

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PRIMATOLOGY, Issue 5 2008
M. Stammati
Abstract Food intake is difficult to estimate under natural conditions. We investigated ingestion rates of 14 different food types in 26 captive capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). The procedure consisted in weighing a piece of food and using a two alternative choice tests to present food to the subject, alone in its cage. We recorded the food chosen and the time it took the subject to consume the food entirely. Consumption time was converted into ingestion rates (g/s) for each food type. Ingestion rates of food types significantly differed, and the difference was significantly higher among foods than among subjects. In particular, ingestion rates of the fruits were higher than those of human-processed food. Interestingly, food preferences were significantly related to energy intake rate, i.e., to the amount of energy ingested per unit of time, but not with ingestion rates or energy content alone. The energy acquired by eating different types of food cannot be calculated on the basis of the time spent eating unless a correction factor for each given food (or similar ones) is applied. Future controlled studies should provide field researchers with such corrections factors, possibly using foods collected in the wild. Am. J. Primatol. 70:510,513, 2008. © 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]