This study examines whether and how cues focusing enhances Chinese-speaking English learners’engagement in comparison,thereby facilitating their acquisition of English articles within xu-based comparative continuatio...This study examines whether and how cues focusing enhances Chinese-speaking English learners’engagement in comparison,thereby facilitating their acquisition of English articles within xu-based comparative continuation writing tasks.Fifty English majors from a Chinese university were randomly assigned to three groups and each group was required to complete a comparative continuation task with one of three conditions:paired cues(cues presented in pairs),randomized cues(cues presented in random order),or implicit cues(no explicit cues provided).All participants undertook pretests,posttests,and delayed tests on English article knowledge,and ten of them volunteered to take follow-up interviews.The results indicate that:1)paired cues were more effective than randomized or implicit cues in promoting the acquisition of English articles;and 2)learners in the paired cues condition produced more target-like article usage in their continuation writings compared to those in the other two conditions.The effectiveness of paired cues is attributed to an enhanced contrast effect,which prompts learners to identify similarities and differences between cues within each pair,relates cue explanations and examples with actual article usage in the reading text,and reflects upon and compares their own article productions against those in the provided reading text.The study concludes that the process of learning through continuation is fundamentally supported by learners’capacity for comparison,reinforcing its role as a core element of xu-competence.展开更多
BACKGROUND Pain in the back or pelvis or fear of back pain may affect the timing or cocontraction of the core muscles.In both static and dynamic movements,the Sahrmann core stability test provides an assessment of cor...BACKGROUND Pain in the back or pelvis or fear of back pain may affect the timing or cocontraction of the core muscles.In both static and dynamic movements,the Sahrmann core stability test provides an assessment of core muscle activation and a person's ability to stabilize the lumbopelvic complex.Preparatory cues and images can be used to increase the activation of these muscles.To attain optimal movement patterns,it will be necessary to determine what cueing will give the most effective results for core stability.AIM To investigate the effects of external and internal cues on core muscle activation during the Sahrmann five-level core stability test.METHODS Total 68 participants(21.83±3.47 years)were randomly allocated to an external(n=35)or internal cue group(n=33).Participants performed the Sahrmann fivelevel core stability test without a cue as baseline and the five-level stability exercises with an internal or external cue.External cue group received a pressure biofeedback unit(PBU),and the internal cue group received an audio cue.A Delsys Trigno^(TM)surface electromyography unit was used for muscle activation from the rectus abdominis,external oblique,and transverse abdominis/internal oblique muscles.RESULTS Linear mixed effects model analysis showed that cueing had a significant effect on core muscle activation(P=0.001);however,there was no significant difference between cue types(internal or external)(P=0.130).CONCLUSION Both external and internal cueing have significant effects on core muscle activation during the Sahrmann five-level core stability test and the PBU does not create higher muscle activation than internal cueing.展开更多
Research on human motion prediction has made significant progress due to its importance in the development of various artificial intelligence applications.However,effectively capturing spatio-temporal features for smo...Research on human motion prediction has made significant progress due to its importance in the development of various artificial intelligence applications.However,effectively capturing spatio-temporal features for smoother and more precise human motion prediction remains a challenge.To address these issues,a robust human motion prediction method via integration of spatial and temporal cues(RISTC)has been proposed.This method captures sufficient spatio-temporal correlation of the observable sequence of human poses by utilizing the spatio-temporal mixed feature extractor(MFE).In multi-layer MFEs,the channel-graph united attention blocks extract the augmented spatial features of the human poses in the channel and spatial dimension.Additionally,multi-scale temporal blocks have been designed to effectively capture complicated and highly dynamic temporal information.Our experiments on the Human3.6M and Carnegie Mellon University motion capture(CMU Mocap)datasets show that the proposed network yields higher prediction accuracy than the state-of-the-art methods.展开更多
Objectives This study aimed to clarify the relationship between the content of proxy decision-making made by families of patients with malignant brain tumors regarding treatment policies and daily care and the cues le...Objectives This study aimed to clarify the relationship between the content of proxy decision-making made by families of patients with malignant brain tumors regarding treatment policies and daily care and the cues leading to those decisions.Methods Semi-structured personal interviews were used to collect data.Seven family members of patients with malignant brain tumors were selected to participate in the study by purposive sampling method from June to August 2022 in the Patient Family Association of Japan.Responses were content analyzed to explore the relationship between the content of decisions regarding“treatment policies”and“daily care”and the cues influencing those decisions.Semi-structured interviews were analyzed by using thematic analysis.Results The contents of proxy decisions regarding“treatment policies”included implementation,interruption,and termination of initial treatments,free medical treatments,use of respirators,and end-of-life sedation and included six cues:treatment policies suggested by the primary physician,information and knowledge about the disease and treatment obtained by the family from limited resources,perceived life threat from symptom worsening,words and reactions from the patient regarding treatment,patient’s personality and way of life inferred from their treatment preferences,family’s thoughts and values hoping for better treatment for the patient.Decisions for“daily care”included meal content and methods,excretion,mobility,maintaining cleanliness,rehabilitation,continuation or resignation from work,treatment settings(outpatient or inpatient),and ways to spend time outside and included seven cues:words and thoughts from the patient about their way of life,patient’s reactions and life history inferred from their preferred way of living,things the patient can do to maintain daily life and roles,awareness of the increasing inability to do things in daily life,family’s underlying thoughts and values about how to spend the remaining time,approval from family members regarding the care setting,advice from medical professionals on living at home.Conclusions For“treatment policies,”guidelines from medical professionals were a key cue,while for“daily care,”the small signs from the patients in their daily lives served as cues for proxy decision-making.This may be due to the lack of information available to families and the limited time available for discussion with the patient.Families of patients with malignant brain tumors repeatedly use multiple cues to make proxy decision-making under high uncertainty.Therefore,nurses supporting proxy decision-making should assess the family’s situation and provide cues that facilitate informed and confident decisions.展开更多
Many prey species rely on publicly available personal and social information regarding local predation threats to assess risks and make contextappropriate behavioral decisions.However,in sexually dimorphic species,mal...Many prey species rely on publicly available personal and social information regarding local predation threats to assess risks and make contextappropriate behavioral decisions.However,in sexually dimorphic species,males and females are expected to differ in the perceived costs and/orbenefts associated with predator avoidance decisions.Recent studies suggest that male Trinidadian guppies(Poecilia reticulata)show reducedor absent responses to acute personal information cues,placing them at greater risk of predation relative to females.Our goal here was totest the hypothesis that adult(reproductively active)male guppies rely on social information to limit potential costs associated with their lack ofresponse to risky personal cues.Adult male guppies were exposed to personal chemosensory cues(either conspecifc alarm cues(AC),a novelodor,or a water control)in the presence of a shoal of three females inside a holding container that allowed the transmission of visual but notchemical cues.At the same time,we exposed females to either risk from AC or no risk,resulting in the display of a range of female behavior,from calm to alarmed,available as social information for males.Alarmed females caused male fright activity to increase and male interest infemales to decrease,regardless of the personal cue treatment.These results indicate that male guppies rely more on female information regarding predation risk than their own personal information,probably to balance trade-offs between reproduction and predator avoidance.展开更多
Multi-Object Tracking(MOT)represents a fundamental but computationally demanding task in computer vision,with particular challenges arising in occluded and densely populated environments.While contemporary tracking sy...Multi-Object Tracking(MOT)represents a fundamental but computationally demanding task in computer vision,with particular challenges arising in occluded and densely populated environments.While contemporary tracking systems have demonstrated considerable progress,persistent limitations—notably frequent occlusion-induced identity switches and tracking inaccuracies—continue to impede reliable real-world deployment.This work introduces an advanced tracking framework that enhances association robustness through a two-stage matching paradigm combining spatial and appearance features.Proposed framework employs:(1)a Height Modulated and Scale Adaptive Spatial Intersection-over-Union(HMSIoU)metric for improved spatial correspondence estimation across variable object scales and partial occlusions;(2)a feature extraction module generating discriminative appearance descriptors for identity maintenance;and(3)a recovery association mechanism for refining matches between unassociated tracks and detections.Comprehensive evaluation on standard MOT17 and MOT20 benchmarks demonstrates significant improvements in tracking consistency,with state-of-the-art performance across key metrics including HOTA(64),MOTA(80.7),IDF1(79.8),and IDs(1379).These results substantiate the efficacy of our Cue-Tracker framework in complex real-world scenarios characterized by occlusions and crowd interactions.展开更多
Male-male vocal competition in anuran species may be influenced by cues related to the temporal sequence of male calls as well by internal temporal, spectral and spatial ones. Nevertheless, the conditions under which ...Male-male vocal competition in anuran species may be influenced by cues related to the temporal sequence of male calls as well by internal temporal, spectral and spatial ones. Nevertheless, the conditions under which each type of cue is important remain unclear. Since the salience of different cues could be reflected by dynamic properties of male-male competition under certain experimental manipulation, we investigated the effects of repeating playbacks of conspecific calls on male call production in the Emei music frog（Babina daunchina）. In Babina, most males produce calls from nest burrows which modify the spectral features of the cues. Females prefer calls produced from inside burrows which are defined as highly sexually attractive（HSA） while those produced outside burrows as low sexual attractiveness（LSA）. In this study HSA and LSA calls were broadcasted either antiphonally or stereophonically through spatially separated speakers in which the temporal sequence and/or spatial position of the playbacks was either predictable or random. Results showed that most males consistently avoided producing advertisement calls overlapping the playback stimuli and generally produced calls competitively in advance of the playbacks. Furthermore males preferentially competed with the HSA calls when the sequence was predictable but competed equally with HSA and LSA calls if the sequence was random regardless of the availability of spatial cues, implying that males relied more on available sequence cues than spatial ones to remain competitive.展开更多
The objective of this pilot study was to compare two different methods of educating prenatal women regarding breast-feeding. Comparisons were made between traditional and innovative methods to determine which was more...The objective of this pilot study was to compare two different methods of educating prenatal women regarding breast-feeding. Comparisons were made between traditional and innovative methods to determine which was more effective in increasing breastfeeding duration. Over a 32 month period, 197 prenatal women were assigned to either a control (C, n = 139) or an experimental (E, n = 51) group. The C group received standard breastfeeding education, while the E group received standard education in addition to information about infant hunger cues. Cox Regression and Kap-lan- Meier analysis were performed. Estimated mean number of weeks for C and E groups to continue breastfeeding was 14.3 + 17.4 weeks and 18.5 + 17.1 weeks, respectively. At 26 weeks, duration of breastfeeding approached significance (chi square = 2.907, df = 1, p = 0.088), indicating probability of continuing to breastfeed was about 28% better for those in E group when compared to C group. Duration of breastfeeding may increase when prenatal women are taught to identify infant behavior such as hunger cues.展开更多
The use of multisensory cues to locate mates can increase an organism＇s success by acting as a back-up plan when one system fails, by providing additional information to the receiver, and by increasing their ability ...The use of multisensory cues to locate mates can increase an organism＇s success by acting as a back-up plan when one system fails, by providing additional information to the receiver, and by increasing their ability to detect mates using senses that have different ranges in a variable aquatic environment. In this contribution we review the sensory cues that male horseshoe crabs Lirnulus polyphemus are known to use when locating mates and then provide new data that shed light on this subject. Dur- ing the breeding season, females migrate into shore during high tides to spawn. Males attach to females as they approach the beach or are attracted to pairs already spawning. Vision is well established as an important cue in attracting males. Although chemoreception is well known in other marine arthropods, and horseshoe crabs have the anatomy available, there are few studies on chemical cues in this species. Experiments are presented here that provide evidence for chemical cue use. We show that the attraction, and retention, of attached and satellite males to actively spawning females and mating pairs involves multimodal cues展开更多
Freshwater vertebrate and invertebrate prey species commonly rely on chemosensory information, including non-injury released disturbance cues, to assess local predation threats. We conducted laboratory studies to （1...Freshwater vertebrate and invertebrate prey species commonly rely on chemosensory information, including non-injury released disturbance cues, to assess local predation threats. We conducted laboratory studies to （1） determine if urea can function as a disturbance cue in juvenile convict cichlids and rainbow trout and （2） determine if the background level of urea influences the behavioral response to a subsequent pulse of urea （＇background noise＇ hypothesis）. In the first series of trials, juve- nile cichlids and trout were exposed to urea at varying concentrations （0 to 0.5 mg L-1 for cichlids and 0 to 1.0 mg L1 for trout）. Our results suggest that both cichilds and trout exhibited functionally similar responses to urea and conspecific disturbance cues and that increasing the concentration of urea results in an increase intensity of antipredator behaviour. In the second series of trials, we pre-exposed cichlids or trout to intermediate or high concentrations of urea （or a distilled water control） and then tested for the response to a second pulse of urea at at intermediate or high concentrations （versus a distilled water control）. Our results demon- strate that pre-exposure to urea reduces or eliminates the response to a second pulse of urea, supporting the background noise hy- pothesis. Together, our results suggest that pulses of urea, released by disturbed or stressed individuals, may function as an early warning signal in freshwater prey species展开更多
Adult horseshoe crabs Limulus polyphemus have long served as models for the study of vision in marine arthropods. Yet, little is known about the ability of early life history stages to detect and respond to visual cue...Adult horseshoe crabs Limulus polyphemus have long served as models for the study of vision in marine arthropods. Yet, little is known about the ability of early life history stages to detect and respond to visual cues. We examined the visually directed movements of larvae and first stage juveniles to horizons containing dark visual targets of different sizes. The study tested the hypotheses that （1） larval and juvenile crabs can detect and respond to visual targets and （2） the direction of orientation varies with the presence of chemical cues associated with settlement habitats. Orientation of larval and juvenile crabs to rectangles subtending angles from 30--330~ was tested in a circular arena containing water that either lacked estuarine chemical cues （offshore water） or contained odors from aquatic vegetation or known predators. In the absence of chemical odors, larvae oriented toward and juveniles moved away from dark horizons subtending angles 〉 60~. When placed in water containing chemical odors from potential nursery habitats, including the seagrasses Halodule wrightii and Syringodium filiforme, crabs reversed their direction of orientation relative to their responses in offshore water. Odors from two known predators, the mummichug Fundulus grandis and blue crab Callinectes sapidus, had no affect on the orientation of larvae. Yet, juveniles responded to both odors by moving toward the visual target. Results support the hypothesis that the visual orientation of larval and juvenile horseshoe crabs changes upon exposure to habitat and predator cues and that the direction of the response undergoes an ontogenetic shift following metamorphosis展开更多
With the increasing presence of robots in our daily life,there is a strong need and demand for the strategies to acquire a high quality interaction between robots and users by enabling robots to understand users’mood...With the increasing presence of robots in our daily life,there is a strong need and demand for the strategies to acquire a high quality interaction between robots and users by enabling robots to understand users’mood,intention,and other aspects.During human-human interaction,personality traits have an important influence on human behavior,decision,mood,and many others.Therefore,we propose an efficient computational framework to endow the robot with the capability of understanding the user’s personality traits based on the user’s nonverbal communication cues represented by three visual features including the head motion,gaze,and body motion energy,and three vocal features including voice pitch,voice energy,and mel-frequency cepstral coefficient(MFCC).We used the Pepper robot in this study as a communication robot to interact with each participant by asking questions,and meanwhile,the robot extracts the nonverbal features from each participant’s habitual behavior using its on-board sensors.On the other hand,each participant’s personality traits are evaluated with a questionnaire.We then train the ridge regression and linear support vector machine(SVM)classifiers using the nonverbal features and personality trait labels from a questionnaire and evaluate the performance of the classifiers.We have verified the validity of the proposed models that showed promising binary classification performance on recognizing each of the Big Five personality traits of the participants based on individual differences in nonverbal communication cues.展开更多
In nature hummingbirds face floral resources whose availability, quality and quantity can vary spatially and temporally. Thus, they must constantly make foraging decisions about which patches, plants and flowers to vi...In nature hummingbirds face floral resources whose availability, quality and quantity can vary spatially and temporally. Thus, they must constantly make foraging decisions about which patches, plants and flowers to visit, partly as a function of the nectar reward. The uncertainty of these decisions would possibly be reduced if an individual could remember locations or use visual cues to avoid revisiting recently depleted flowers. In the present study, we carried out field experiments with white-eared hummingbirds Hylocharis leucotis, to evaluate their use of locations or visual cues when foraging on natural flowers Penstemon roseus. We evaluated the use of spatial memory by observing birds while they were foraging between two plants and within a single plant. Our results showed that hummingbirds prefer to use location when foraging in two plants, but they also use visual cues to efficiently locate unvisited rewarded flowers when they feed on a single plant. However, in absence of visual cues, in both experiments birds mainly used the location of previously visited flowers to make subsequent visits. Our data suggest that hummingbirds are capable of learning and employing this flexibility depending on the faced environmental conditions and the information acquired in previous visits [Current Zoology 57 （4）： 468-476, 2011].展开更多
The effects of four ions and eight neuroactive compounds on inducing larval settlement ofA. japonicus were assessed in the present study. All bioassays were conducted in 60 × 9mm Petri dishes, each contained 10mL...The effects of four ions and eight neuroactive compounds on inducing larval settlement ofA. japonicus were assessed in the present study. All bioassays were conducted in 60 × 9mm Petri dishes, each contained 10mL of the test solution and 10 doliolaria larvae. There were significant inductive effects of K＋ （10 mmol L-l）, NH4＋ （0.1 mmol L-l）, GABA （10-3 tool L-l）, acetylcholine （10-5 molL-l）, L-DOPA （10-SmolL-1）, norepinephrine （10-SmolL-1） and dopamine （10-TmolL-1 and 10-5 molL-1） on the settlement of sea cucumber larvae. L-DOPA and dopamine are the most efficient chemical cues to induce A.japonicus larvae to settle. The highest percentage of larval settlement was induced by 10-5 tool L-1 L-DOPA and dopamine （33% and 40%） compared to the control （7%）. However, Ca2＋, Mg2＋, choline, serotonin, and epinephrine were less effective on larval settlement at all tested concentrations. This study evaluated the stability and feasibility of chemical cues for larval settlement in different culture systems, which can be applied to improve the hatchery production of this valuable species.展开更多
Nerve guidance channels for peripheral nerve injury： Over the past decade, nerve guidance channels （NGCs） have emerged as a promising technology for regenerating gap injuries in peripheral nerves. Nerve gap injurie...Nerve guidance channels for peripheral nerve injury： Over the past decade, nerve guidance channels （NGCs） have emerged as a promising technology for regenerating gap injuries in peripheral nerves. Nerve gap injuries resulting from neurodegeneration and trauma, such as car accidents and battlefield wounds, affect hun- dreds of thousands of people annually. Motivated by suboptimal results obtained with the current gold standard of autologous grafting （i.e., autografts）, various commercially available NGCs composed of synthetic and biomaterials are now alternatively available （Jia et al., 2014; Jones et al., 2016）.展开更多
Predation is a pervasive selection pressure,shaping morphological,physiological,and behavioral phenotypes of prey species.Recent studies have begun to examine how the effects of individual experience with predation ri...Predation is a pervasive selection pressure,shaping morphological,physiological,and behavioral phenotypes of prey species.Recent studies have begun to examine how the effects of individual experience with predation risk shapes the use of publicly available risk assessment cues.Here,we investigated the effects of prior predation risk experience on disturbance cue production and use by Trinidadian guppies Poecilia reticulata under laboratory conditions.In our first experiment,we demonstrate that the response of guppies from a high predation population(Lopinot River)was dependent upon the source of disturbance cue senders(high vs.low predation populations).However,guppies collected from a low predation site(Upper Aripo River)exhibited similar responses to disturbance cues,regardless of the sender population.In our second experiment,we used laboratory strain guppies exposed to high versus low background risk conditions.Our results show an analogous response patterns as shown for our first experiment.Guppies exposed to high background risk conditions exhibited stronger responses to the disturbance cues collected from senders exposed to high(vs.low)risk conditions and guppies exposed to low risk conditions were not influenced by sender experience.Combined,our results suggest that experience with background predation risk significantly impacts both the production of and response to disturbance cues in guppies.展开更多
Mechanisms of predator detection and the influence of the presence of nonlethal predators on antipredator defense behavior and metamorphic traits were studied in the Indian tree frog, Polypedates maculatus. Exposure o...Mechanisms of predator detection and the influence of the presence of nonlethal predators on antipredator defense behavior and metamorphic traits were studied in the Indian tree frog, Polypedates maculatus. Exposure of P. maculatus tadpoles to chemical cues of caged predator（crabs, Barytelphusa spp.） fed with either conspecific or heterogeneric tadpoles, or were starved elicited defense behavior（by avoiding predator zone） in them. Such a behavior was not evident when exposed to predators housed in a glass beaker（visual cues）. Both early（Gosner stage 27–28） and later（Gosner stage 35–36） stage tadpoles when exposed to caged predators（fed with conspecific tadpoles）, prey tadpoles spent less time swimming and remained motionless for longer periods. Yet, the time spent by prey in feeding was unaffected. Further, the predator avoidance behavior exhibited by them was of the same intensity regardless of whether the caged predators were fed or starved implying the influence of predator＇s kairomones. Tadpoles reared with caged predator reached the metamorphic climax stage（MC stage; Gosner stage 42） earlier than those reared without a predator. Size at emergence（Gosner stage 46） was comparable in both the groups. The findings suggest that P. maculatus tadpoles assess predation risk chiefly by sensing kairomones of the predator in eliciting antipredator defense behaviors. Accelerated development and early metamorphosis without any compromise of the size at emergence may be due to their unaltered feeding activity.展开更多
The current study investigated whether domestic dogs encode local and/or global cues in spatial working memory. Seven dogs were trained to use a source of allocentric information (local and/or global cues) to locate a...The current study investigated whether domestic dogs encode local and/or global cues in spatial working memory. Seven dogs were trained to use a source of allocentric information (local and/or global cues) to locate an attractive object they saw move and disappear behind one of the three opaque boxes arrayed in front of them. To do so, after the disappearance of the target object and out of the dogs’ knowledge, all sources of allocentric information were simultaneously shifted to a new spatial position and the dogs were forced to follow a U-shaped pathway leading to the hiding box. Out of the seven dogs that were trained in the detour problem, only three dogs learned to use the cues that were moved from trial to trial. On tests, local (boxes and experimenter) and/or global cues (walls of the room) were systematically and drastically shifted to a new position in the testing chamber. Although they easily succeeded the control trials, the three dogs failed to use a specific source of allocentric information when local and global cues were put in conflict. In discussion, we explore several hypotheses to explain why dogs have difficulties to use allocentric cues to locate a hidden object in a detour problem and why they do not differentiate the local and global cues in this particular experimental setting.展开更多
Many studies have looked at how dogs respond to human communicative information. Here, we examined which human communicative factors were important in influencing dogs’ responses. Eleven healthy pet dogs with no appa...Many studies have looked at how dogs respond to human communicative information. Here, we examined which human communicative factors were important in influencing dogs’ responses. Eleven healthy pet dogs with no apparent aggressive behaviour toward people were recruited. Five sensory conditions (all cues presented;either a visual, an auditory, or an olfactory cue presented;no cues presented) were provided three times randomly to each dog during the tests. All tests were video recorded, and both the dogs’ behaviour and time taken to reach the person when she presented each of the sensory cue conditions were observed. Total rates of reaching the person were as follows: 97.0% (all cues), 87.9% (auditory cues), 84.4% (visual cues), 84.4% (olfactory cues), and 69.7% (no cues). The time taken for the dog to notice the person in the box and then obtain a reward from her differed among the five conditions: all cues (6.00 ± 0.32 s) and visual cues (6.02 ± 0.91 s) were significantly faster than auditory cues (18.56 ± 9.57 s) and no cues (26.55 ± 11.72 s). Thus the type of information input was important in recognition of the person by the dogs and influenced the dogs’ response times;visual cues appeared advantageous in confirming the person’s presence.展开更多
文摘This study examines whether and how cues focusing enhances Chinese-speaking English learners’engagement in comparison,thereby facilitating their acquisition of English articles within xu-based comparative continuation writing tasks.Fifty English majors from a Chinese university were randomly assigned to three groups and each group was required to complete a comparative continuation task with one of three conditions:paired cues(cues presented in pairs),randomized cues(cues presented in random order),or implicit cues(no explicit cues provided).All participants undertook pretests,posttests,and delayed tests on English article knowledge,and ten of them volunteered to take follow-up interviews.The results indicate that:1)paired cues were more effective than randomized or implicit cues in promoting the acquisition of English articles;and 2)learners in the paired cues condition produced more target-like article usage in their continuation writings compared to those in the other two conditions.The effectiveness of paired cues is attributed to an enhanced contrast effect,which prompts learners to identify similarities and differences between cues within each pair,relates cue explanations and examples with actual article usage in the reading text,and reflects upon and compares their own article productions against those in the provided reading text.The study concludes that the process of learning through continuation is fundamentally supported by learners’capacity for comparison,reinforcing its role as a core element of xu-competence.
文摘BACKGROUND Pain in the back or pelvis or fear of back pain may affect the timing or cocontraction of the core muscles.In both static and dynamic movements,the Sahrmann core stability test provides an assessment of core muscle activation and a person's ability to stabilize the lumbopelvic complex.Preparatory cues and images can be used to increase the activation of these muscles.To attain optimal movement patterns,it will be necessary to determine what cueing will give the most effective results for core stability.AIM To investigate the effects of external and internal cues on core muscle activation during the Sahrmann five-level core stability test.METHODS Total 68 participants(21.83±3.47 years)were randomly allocated to an external(n=35)or internal cue group(n=33).Participants performed the Sahrmann fivelevel core stability test without a cue as baseline and the five-level stability exercises with an internal or external cue.External cue group received a pressure biofeedback unit(PBU),and the internal cue group received an audio cue.A Delsys Trigno^(TM)surface electromyography unit was used for muscle activation from the rectus abdominis,external oblique,and transverse abdominis/internal oblique muscles.RESULTS Linear mixed effects model analysis showed that cueing had a significant effect on core muscle activation(P=0.001);however,there was no significant difference between cue types(internal or external)(P=0.130).CONCLUSION Both external and internal cueing have significant effects on core muscle activation during the Sahrmann five-level core stability test and the PBU does not create higher muscle activation than internal cueing.
基金supported by the National Key R&D Program of China(No.2018YFB1305200)the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province(No.LGG21F030011)。
文摘Research on human motion prediction has made significant progress due to its importance in the development of various artificial intelligence applications.However,effectively capturing spatio-temporal features for smoother and more precise human motion prediction remains a challenge.To address these issues,a robust human motion prediction method via integration of spatial and temporal cues(RISTC)has been proposed.This method captures sufficient spatio-temporal correlation of the observable sequence of human poses by utilizing the spatio-temporal mixed feature extractor(MFE).In multi-layer MFEs,the channel-graph united attention blocks extract the augmented spatial features of the human poses in the channel and spatial dimension.Additionally,multi-scale temporal blocks have been designed to effectively capture complicated and highly dynamic temporal information.Our experiments on the Human3.6M and Carnegie Mellon University motion capture(CMU Mocap)datasets show that the proposed network yields higher prediction accuracy than the state-of-the-art methods.
文摘Objectives This study aimed to clarify the relationship between the content of proxy decision-making made by families of patients with malignant brain tumors regarding treatment policies and daily care and the cues leading to those decisions.Methods Semi-structured personal interviews were used to collect data.Seven family members of patients with malignant brain tumors were selected to participate in the study by purposive sampling method from June to August 2022 in the Patient Family Association of Japan.Responses were content analyzed to explore the relationship between the content of decisions regarding“treatment policies”and“daily care”and the cues influencing those decisions.Semi-structured interviews were analyzed by using thematic analysis.Results The contents of proxy decisions regarding“treatment policies”included implementation,interruption,and termination of initial treatments,free medical treatments,use of respirators,and end-of-life sedation and included six cues:treatment policies suggested by the primary physician,information and knowledge about the disease and treatment obtained by the family from limited resources,perceived life threat from symptom worsening,words and reactions from the patient regarding treatment,patient’s personality and way of life inferred from their treatment preferences,family’s thoughts and values hoping for better treatment for the patient.Decisions for“daily care”included meal content and methods,excretion,mobility,maintaining cleanliness,rehabilitation,continuation or resignation from work,treatment settings(outpatient or inpatient),and ways to spend time outside and included seven cues:words and thoughts from the patient about their way of life,patient’s reactions and life history inferred from their preferred way of living,things the patient can do to maintain daily life and roles,awareness of the increasing inability to do things in daily life,family’s underlying thoughts and values about how to spend the remaining time,approval from family members regarding the care setting,advice from medical professionals on living at home.Conclusions For“treatment policies,”guidelines from medical professionals were a key cue,while for“daily care,”the small signs from the patients in their daily lives served as cues for proxy decision-making.This may be due to the lack of information available to families and the limited time available for discussion with the patient.Families of patients with malignant brain tumors repeatedly use multiple cues to make proxy decision-making under high uncertainty.Therefore,nurses supporting proxy decision-making should assess the family’s situation and provide cues that facilitate informed and confident decisions.
基金supported by Concordia University and funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada(Discovery Grant to G.E.B.,and an E.W.R.SteacieMemorial Fellowship to M.C.O.F.).
文摘Many prey species rely on publicly available personal and social information regarding local predation threats to assess risks and make contextappropriate behavioral decisions.However,in sexually dimorphic species,males and females are expected to differ in the perceived costs and/orbenefts associated with predator avoidance decisions.Recent studies suggest that male Trinidadian guppies(Poecilia reticulata)show reducedor absent responses to acute personal information cues,placing them at greater risk of predation relative to females.Our goal here was totest the hypothesis that adult(reproductively active)male guppies rely on social information to limit potential costs associated with their lack ofresponse to risky personal cues.Adult male guppies were exposed to personal chemosensory cues(either conspecifc alarm cues(AC),a novelodor,or a water control)in the presence of a shoal of three females inside a holding container that allowed the transmission of visual but notchemical cues.At the same time,we exposed females to either risk from AC or no risk,resulting in the display of a range of female behavior,from calm to alarmed,available as social information for males.Alarmed females caused male fright activity to increase and male interest infemales to decrease,regardless of the personal cue treatment.These results indicate that male guppies rely more on female information regarding predation risk than their own personal information,probably to balance trade-offs between reproduction and predator avoidance.
文摘Multi-Object Tracking(MOT)represents a fundamental but computationally demanding task in computer vision,with particular challenges arising in occluded and densely populated environments.While contemporary tracking systems have demonstrated considerable progress,persistent limitations—notably frequent occlusion-induced identity switches and tracking inaccuracies—continue to impede reliable real-world deployment.This work introduces an advanced tracking framework that enhances association robustness through a two-stage matching paradigm combining spatial and appearance features.Proposed framework employs:(1)a Height Modulated and Scale Adaptive Spatial Intersection-over-Union(HMSIoU)metric for improved spatial correspondence estimation across variable object scales and partial occlusions;(2)a feature extraction module generating discriminative appearance descriptors for identity maintenance;and(3)a recovery association mechanism for refining matches between unassociated tracks and detections.Comprehensive evaluation on standard MOT17 and MOT20 benchmarks demonstrates significant improvements in tracking consistency,with state-of-the-art performance across key metrics including HOTA(64),MOTA(80.7),IDF1(79.8),and IDs(1379).These results substantiate the efficacy of our Cue-Tracker framework in complex real-world scenarios characterized by occlusions and crowd interactions.
基金supported by the grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.31372217 to Guangzhan Fang and No.31270042 to Jianguo Cui)the Youth Professor Project of Chengdu Institute of Biology(Y3B3011)Youth Innovation Promotion Association of Chinese Academy of Sciences(Y2C3011,KSCX2-EW-J-22)to Jianguo Cui
文摘Male-male vocal competition in anuran species may be influenced by cues related to the temporal sequence of male calls as well by internal temporal, spectral and spatial ones. Nevertheless, the conditions under which each type of cue is important remain unclear. Since the salience of different cues could be reflected by dynamic properties of male-male competition under certain experimental manipulation, we investigated the effects of repeating playbacks of conspecific calls on male call production in the Emei music frog（Babina daunchina）. In Babina, most males produce calls from nest burrows which modify the spectral features of the cues. Females prefer calls produced from inside burrows which are defined as highly sexually attractive（HSA） while those produced outside burrows as low sexual attractiveness（LSA）. In this study HSA and LSA calls were broadcasted either antiphonally or stereophonically through spatially separated speakers in which the temporal sequence and/or spatial position of the playbacks was either predictable or random. Results showed that most males consistently avoided producing advertisement calls overlapping the playback stimuli and generally produced calls competitively in advance of the playbacks. Furthermore males preferentially competed with the HSA calls when the sequence was predictable but competed equally with HSA and LSA calls if the sequence was random regardless of the availability of spatial cues, implying that males relied more on available sequence cues than spatial ones to remain competitive.
文摘The objective of this pilot study was to compare two different methods of educating prenatal women regarding breast-feeding. Comparisons were made between traditional and innovative methods to determine which was more effective in increasing breastfeeding duration. Over a 32 month period, 197 prenatal women were assigned to either a control (C, n = 139) or an experimental (E, n = 51) group. The C group received standard breastfeeding education, while the E group received standard education in addition to information about infant hunger cues. Cox Regression and Kap-lan- Meier analysis were performed. Estimated mean number of weeks for C and E groups to continue breastfeeding was 14.3 + 17.4 weeks and 18.5 + 17.1 weeks, respectively. At 26 weeks, duration of breastfeeding approached significance (chi square = 2.907, df = 1, p = 0.088), indicating probability of continuing to breastfeed was about 28% better for those in E group when compared to C group. Duration of breastfeeding may increase when prenatal women are taught to identify infant behavior such as hunger cues.
基金supported by the National Science Foundation IOB-0641750
文摘The use of multisensory cues to locate mates can increase an organism＇s success by acting as a back-up plan when one system fails, by providing additional information to the receiver, and by increasing their ability to detect mates using senses that have different ranges in a variable aquatic environment. In this contribution we review the sensory cues that male horseshoe crabs Lirnulus polyphemus are known to use when locating mates and then provide new data that shed light on this subject. Dur- ing the breeding season, females migrate into shore during high tides to spawn. Males attach to females as they approach the beach or are attracted to pairs already spawning. Vision is well established as an important cue in attracting males. Although chemoreception is well known in other marine arthropods, and horseshoe crabs have the anatomy available, there are few studies on chemical cues in this species. Experiments are presented here that provide evidence for chemical cue use. We show that the attraction, and retention, of attached and satellite males to actively spawning females and mating pairs involves multimodal cues
文摘Freshwater vertebrate and invertebrate prey species commonly rely on chemosensory information, including non-injury released disturbance cues, to assess local predation threats. We conducted laboratory studies to （1） determine if urea can function as a disturbance cue in juvenile convict cichlids and rainbow trout and （2） determine if the background level of urea influences the behavioral response to a subsequent pulse of urea （＇background noise＇ hypothesis）. In the first series of trials, juve- nile cichlids and trout were exposed to urea at varying concentrations （0 to 0.5 mg L-1 for cichlids and 0 to 1.0 mg L1 for trout）. Our results suggest that both cichilds and trout exhibited functionally similar responses to urea and conspecific disturbance cues and that increasing the concentration of urea results in an increase intensity of antipredator behaviour. In the second series of trials, we pre-exposed cichlids or trout to intermediate or high concentrations of urea （or a distilled water control） and then tested for the response to a second pulse of urea at at intermediate or high concentrations （versus a distilled water control）. Our results demon- strate that pre-exposure to urea reduces or eliminates the response to a second pulse of urea, supporting the background noise hy- pothesis. Together, our results suggest that pulses of urea, released by disturbed or stressed individuals, may function as an early warning signal in freshwater prey species
基金supported by a grant from the National Park Service (PS180060016)supported by a Graduate Teaching Fellowship (GK-12) from the National Science Foundation (Florida Tech INSTEP Program) under grant Nos.DGE 0440529 and 0638702
文摘Adult horseshoe crabs Limulus polyphemus have long served as models for the study of vision in marine arthropods. Yet, little is known about the ability of early life history stages to detect and respond to visual cues. We examined the visually directed movements of larvae and first stage juveniles to horizons containing dark visual targets of different sizes. The study tested the hypotheses that （1） larval and juvenile crabs can detect and respond to visual targets and （2） the direction of orientation varies with the presence of chemical cues associated with settlement habitats. Orientation of larval and juvenile crabs to rectangles subtending angles from 30--330~ was tested in a circular arena containing water that either lacked estuarine chemical cues （offshore water） or contained odors from aquatic vegetation or known predators. In the absence of chemical odors, larvae oriented toward and juveniles moved away from dark horizons subtending angles 〉 60~. When placed in water containing chemical odors from potential nursery habitats, including the seagrasses Halodule wrightii and Syringodium filiforme, crabs reversed their direction of orientation relative to their responses in offshore water. Odors from two known predators, the mummichug Fundulus grandis and blue crab Callinectes sapidus, had no affect on the orientation of larvae. Yet, juveniles responded to both odors by moving toward the visual target. Results support the hypothesis that the visual orientation of larval and juvenile horseshoe crabs changes upon exposure to habitat and predator cues and that the direction of the response undergoes an ontogenetic shift following metamorphosis
基金supported by the EU-Japan coordinated R&D project on“Culture Aware Robots and Environmental Sensor Systems for Elderly Support,”commissioned by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan and EC Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme(737858)financial supports from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research(AFOSR-AOARD/FA2386-19-1-4015)。
文摘With the increasing presence of robots in our daily life,there is a strong need and demand for the strategies to acquire a high quality interaction between robots and users by enabling robots to understand users’mood,intention,and other aspects.During human-human interaction,personality traits have an important influence on human behavior,decision,mood,and many others.Therefore,we propose an efficient computational framework to endow the robot with the capability of understanding the user’s personality traits based on the user’s nonverbal communication cues represented by three visual features including the head motion,gaze,and body motion energy,and three vocal features including voice pitch,voice energy,and mel-frequency cepstral coefficient(MFCC).We used the Pepper robot in this study as a communication robot to interact with each participant by asking questions,and meanwhile,the robot extracts the nonverbal features from each participant’s habitual behavior using its on-board sensors.On the other hand,each participant’s personality traits are evaluated with a questionnaire.We then train the ridge regression and linear support vector machine(SVM)classifiers using the nonverbal features and personality trait labels from a questionnaire and evaluate the performance of the classifiers.We have verified the validity of the proposed models that showed promising binary classification performance on recognizing each of the Big Five personality traits of the participants based on individual differences in nonverbal communication cues.
文摘In nature hummingbirds face floral resources whose availability, quality and quantity can vary spatially and temporally. Thus, they must constantly make foraging decisions about which patches, plants and flowers to visit, partly as a function of the nectar reward. The uncertainty of these decisions would possibly be reduced if an individual could remember locations or use visual cues to avoid revisiting recently depleted flowers. In the present study, we carried out field experiments with white-eared hummingbirds Hylocharis leucotis, to evaluate their use of locations or visual cues when foraging on natural flowers Penstemon roseus. We evaluated the use of spatial memory by observing birds while they were foraging between two plants and within a single plant. Our results showed that hummingbirds prefer to use location when foraging in two plants, but they also use visual cues to efficiently locate unvisited rewarded flowers when they feed on a single plant. However, in absence of visual cues, in both experiments birds mainly used the location of previously visited flowers to make subsequent visits. Our data suggest that hummingbirds are capable of learning and employing this flexibility depending on the faced environmental conditions and the information acquired in previous visits [Current Zoology 57 （4）： 468-476, 2011].
基金supported by the grants from National Marine Public Welfare Research Program (201205023)the Scientific and Technical Supporting Program (2011 BAD13B03)Shandong Seed Project
文摘The effects of four ions and eight neuroactive compounds on inducing larval settlement ofA. japonicus were assessed in the present study. All bioassays were conducted in 60 × 9mm Petri dishes, each contained 10mL of the test solution and 10 doliolaria larvae. There were significant inductive effects of K＋ （10 mmol L-l）, NH4＋ （0.1 mmol L-l）, GABA （10-3 tool L-l）, acetylcholine （10-5 molL-l）, L-DOPA （10-SmolL-1）, norepinephrine （10-SmolL-1） and dopamine （10-TmolL-1 and 10-5 molL-1） on the settlement of sea cucumber larvae. L-DOPA and dopamine are the most efficient chemical cues to induce A.japonicus larvae to settle. The highest percentage of larval settlement was induced by 10-5 tool L-1 L-DOPA and dopamine （33% and 40%） compared to the control （7%）. However, Ca2＋, Mg2＋, choline, serotonin, and epinephrine were less effective on larval settlement at all tested concentrations. This study evaluated the stability and feasibility of chemical cues for larval settlement in different culture systems, which can be applied to improve the hatchery production of this valuable species.
基金supported by the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund(2013-MSCRFE-146-00)(to XJ)in part by the National Institute of Health(R01HL118084)(to XJ)
文摘Nerve guidance channels for peripheral nerve injury： Over the past decade, nerve guidance channels （NGCs） have emerged as a promising technology for regenerating gap injuries in peripheral nerves. Nerve gap injuries resulting from neurodegeneration and trauma, such as car accidents and battlefield wounds, affect hun- dreds of thousands of people annually. Motivated by suboptimal results obtained with the current gold standard of autologous grafting （i.e., autografts）, various commercially available NGCs composed of synthetic and biomaterials are now alternatively available （Jia et al., 2014; Jones et al., 2016）.
基金Concordia University and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada to G.E.B.
文摘Predation is a pervasive selection pressure,shaping morphological,physiological,and behavioral phenotypes of prey species.Recent studies have begun to examine how the effects of individual experience with predation risk shapes the use of publicly available risk assessment cues.Here,we investigated the effects of prior predation risk experience on disturbance cue production and use by Trinidadian guppies Poecilia reticulata under laboratory conditions.In our first experiment,we demonstrate that the response of guppies from a high predation population(Lopinot River)was dependent upon the source of disturbance cue senders(high vs.low predation populations).However,guppies collected from a low predation site(Upper Aripo River)exhibited similar responses to disturbance cues,regardless of the sender population.In our second experiment,we used laboratory strain guppies exposed to high versus low background risk conditions.Our results show an analogous response patterns as shown for our first experiment.Guppies exposed to high background risk conditions exhibited stronger responses to the disturbance cues collected from senders exposed to high(vs.low)risk conditions and guppies exposed to low risk conditions were not influenced by sender experience.Combined,our results suggest that experience with background predation risk significantly impacts both the production of and response to disturbance cues in guppies.
文摘Mechanisms of predator detection and the influence of the presence of nonlethal predators on antipredator defense behavior and metamorphic traits were studied in the Indian tree frog, Polypedates maculatus. Exposure of P. maculatus tadpoles to chemical cues of caged predator（crabs, Barytelphusa spp.） fed with either conspecific or heterogeneric tadpoles, or were starved elicited defense behavior（by avoiding predator zone） in them. Such a behavior was not evident when exposed to predators housed in a glass beaker（visual cues）. Both early（Gosner stage 27–28） and later（Gosner stage 35–36） stage tadpoles when exposed to caged predators（fed with conspecific tadpoles）, prey tadpoles spent less time swimming and remained motionless for longer periods. Yet, the time spent by prey in feeding was unaffected. Further, the predator avoidance behavior exhibited by them was of the same intensity regardless of whether the caged predators were fed or starved implying the influence of predator＇s kairomones. Tadpoles reared with caged predator reached the metamorphic climax stage（MC stage; Gosner stage 42） earlier than those reared without a predator. Size at emergence（Gosner stage 46） was comparable in both the groups. The findings suggest that P. maculatus tadpoles assess predation risk chiefly by sensing kairomones of the predator in eliciting antipredator defense behaviors. Accelerated development and early metamorphosis without any compromise of the size at emergence may be due to their unaltered feeding activity.
文摘The current study investigated whether domestic dogs encode local and/or global cues in spatial working memory. Seven dogs were trained to use a source of allocentric information (local and/or global cues) to locate an attractive object they saw move and disappear behind one of the three opaque boxes arrayed in front of them. To do so, after the disappearance of the target object and out of the dogs’ knowledge, all sources of allocentric information were simultaneously shifted to a new spatial position and the dogs were forced to follow a U-shaped pathway leading to the hiding box. Out of the seven dogs that were trained in the detour problem, only three dogs learned to use the cues that were moved from trial to trial. On tests, local (boxes and experimenter) and/or global cues (walls of the room) were systematically and drastically shifted to a new position in the testing chamber. Although they easily succeeded the control trials, the three dogs failed to use a specific source of allocentric information when local and global cues were put in conflict. In discussion, we explore several hypotheses to explain why dogs have difficulties to use allocentric cues to locate a hidden object in a detour problem and why they do not differentiate the local and global cues in this particular experimental setting.
文摘Many studies have looked at how dogs respond to human communicative information. Here, we examined which human communicative factors were important in influencing dogs’ responses. Eleven healthy pet dogs with no apparent aggressive behaviour toward people were recruited. Five sensory conditions (all cues presented;either a visual, an auditory, or an olfactory cue presented;no cues presented) were provided three times randomly to each dog during the tests. All tests were video recorded, and both the dogs’ behaviour and time taken to reach the person when she presented each of the sensory cue conditions were observed. Total rates of reaching the person were as follows: 97.0% (all cues), 87.9% (auditory cues), 84.4% (visual cues), 84.4% (olfactory cues), and 69.7% (no cues). The time taken for the dog to notice the person in the box and then obtain a reward from her differed among the five conditions: all cues (6.00 ± 0.32 s) and visual cues (6.02 ± 0.91 s) were significantly faster than auditory cues (18.56 ± 9.57 s) and no cues (26.55 ± 11.72 s). Thus the type of information input was important in recognition of the person by the dogs and influenced the dogs’ response times;visual cues appeared advantageous in confirming the person’s presence.
