IMPORTANCE OF SENSORY FACTORS IN PROCESSED SEAFOOD: METHODS AND RESULTS1

This paper considers “importance” of sensory attributes from the consumer point of view, with emphasis on processed seafood. There are three key measures of importance. Attitudinal importance measures what consumers think to be important and refers to general opinions about the category. Sensory system importance measures how strongly different sensory inputs (e.g., appearance, aroma, taste, texture) “drive” overall liking, and show the key sensory inputs to which consumers attend. Attribute level importance measures the relation between sensory intensity and overall liking for each attribute. It shows which specific attributes drive liking, how liking varies with the specific sensory attribute, and whether (and at what sensory level) there exists an optimal level.     

A test of the Australian Weed Risk Assessment system in China

The Australian Weed Risk Assessment system (AWRA) is an effective pre-border weed-screening tool that has played an active role in preventing the introduction of alien weeds into Australia and has been utilized in several other countries worldwide. Here, we selected 131 species of naturalized exotic plants (including 76 species of given non-weeds and 55 species of given weeds) to evaluate the AWRA in China for the first time. The AWRA performed better for discriminating major weeds than non-weeds and minor weeds, as it correctly rejected 84% of major weeds and did not wrongly accept a major weed. Among non-weeds, 76% were correctly classified with the final outcome of “accept” and 7.9% were wrongly rejected by the AWRA. This system correctly rejected 56% of minor weeds but accepted only 2.8% of minor weeds. The remaining 23% of all alien plants tested were classified as “evaluate further” by the AWRA. The area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.944, suggesting that the AWRA would be highly efficient at discriminating alien plants in China. In addition, we compared the scores of seven attributes of the AWRA between prior plant categories and analyzed their correlation with weed status. The average score for each attribute differed significantly between the two prior categories (weed and non-weed), but the average scores of the attribute “undesirable traits” did not significantly differ between any two of the three categories (non-weeds, minor weeds, and major weeds). There was a significant positive correlation between the scores of each attribute of the AWRA and weed status. The correlation coefficient for “dispersal mechanisms” and weed status was the highest and that for “undesirable traits” was the lowest. We believe that the AWRA can serve as an important weed-screening tool for plant introduction management in China.     

Iridis-pi: a low-cost,compact demonstration cluster

In this paper, we report on our “Iridis-Pi” cluster, which consists of 64 Raspberry Pi Model B nodes each equipped with a 700 MHz ARM processor, 256 Mbit of RAM and a 16 GiB SD card for local storage. The cluster has a number of advantages which are not shared with conventional data-centre based cluster, including its low total power consumption, easy portability due to its small size and weight, affordability, and passive, ambient cooling. We propose that these attributes make Iridis-Pi ideally suited to educational applications, where it provides a low-cost starting point to inspire and enable students to understand and apply high-performance computing and data handling to tackle complex engineering and scientific challenges. We present the results of benchmarking both the computational power and network performance of the “Iridis-Pi.” We also argue that such systems should be considered in some additional specialist application areas where these unique attributes may prove advantageous. We believe that the choice of an ARM CPU foreshadows a trend towards the increasing adoption of low-power, non-PC-compatible architectures in high performance clusters.     

Logical-Semantic Analysis and the Development of L.S. Vygotsky's Ideas About “Units” and “Elements” of Psychological Systems

Based on an analysis of L.S. Vygotsky's concepts of “units” and “elements” of psychological systems, this article highlights five of their attributes. It shows that these attributes are logically symmetrical, since in their wording they can be converted into one another by negation or by replacing some words with their opposites. This suggests that the concepts of the “unit” and “element” of a system are different poles of one theoretical construct of the activity of human psychology. Thus methods for the study of psychological systems by breaking them down into elements or by separating them into units can be seen as complementary. The article describes differences among the concepts of “unit,” “minimal unit,” and “cell” of a psychological system. It reviews several problems that are solvable using the “method of units,” as well as some concepts of the theory of psychological systems that are understood as holistic, conceptual, and active processes and/or results of human interaction with the world. Among the examples of such systems are “systems of psychological functions” (according to Vygotsky), as well as separate activities (according to A.N. Leontiev), human actions and operations (interactions with the world on the level of objects and mental or physical means). The “component” of a psychological system is defined as any “something” that in some sense belongs to or is included in human interaction with the world. A component that belongs to the system is called an “element” of it, but a component that is included in the functioning and development of the system is called a “part” of it. The article presents the mathematical and psychological foundation of these definitions. It identifies and discusses the substantial (independently existing) components of psychological systems and their attributes (properties and conditions). It describes the relationships between them using the bipolar theoretical constructs “part-element” and “substantial-attributive” component of a system.     

Review of the September 30, 2002 Symposium on the "Evolving Legal Status of Chimpanzees"-Harvard Law School

A survey was conducted to assess decisions people make when acquiring dogs, including what sources they consider, the importance of the variety of dogs available, and their willingness to travel to adopt dogs of their choice. A conjoint design was used to ask each respondent to rate his or her likelihood of acquiring a dog based on a “profile” that included attributes such as age, size, and color as well as where the dog came from and euthanasia risk. Overall, these results showed that people preferred variety and would drive distances to get dogs of their choice. The findings revealed that no single attribute drove choice, indicating that people have complex preferences and these vary widely across individuals. Nonhuman animal shelters may be able to increase their adoption rates by providing more variety and not just dogs typically thought of as “in demand” but those who represent a range of diversity through the utilization of animal relocation programs.     

Hydrological attributes and rheophilic freshwater fish: stock assessment

The mathematical and statistical advances in fitting stock assessment models enabled the emergence of the paradigm of “integrated analysis”, which fits all available data to a single model of population dynamics that traditionally has total catch as the only forcing function of the system. This approach, however, allowed us to include, in a flexible way, the effect of hydrological regime as an additional forcing function. We tried to achieve this flexibility by making the annual recruitment rates and spawning biomass adjustable to the attributes of the hydrological cycle data. Our models showed that these attributes are influential in the population dynamics of Brycon hilarii of the Northern Pantanal, and their inclusion in the models allowed best partial fits (which considered fits only to the data components length- and age-compositions, CPUE of juveniles and adults) than the Base-case (without hydrological attributes). The best partial fits where obtained when the attributes “delay of floods” and “intensity of floods” were forcing the spawning biomass and the annual recruitment respectively, indicating that these characteristics of the population may be influenced by specific attributes of the water level. The use of integrated modeling contributed with the advancement of population ecology knowledge of rheophilic fish. It is recommended that freshwater fisheries management be integrated into the hydrology management.     

Quantifying sustainability: Resilience,efficiency and the return of information theory

Contemporary science is preoccupied with that which exists; it rarely accounts for what is missing. But often the key to a system's persistence lies with information concerning lacunae. Information theory (IT), predicated as it is on the indeterminacies of existence, constitutes a natural tool for quantifying the beneficial reserves that lacunae can afford a system in its response to disturbance. In the format of IT, unutilized reserve capacity is complementary to the effective performance of the system, and too little of either attribute can render a system unsustainable. The fundamental calculus of IT provides a uniform way to quantify both essential attributes – effective performance and reserve capacity – and results in a single metric that gauges system sustainability (robustness) in terms of the tradeoff allotment of each. Furthermore, the same mathematics allows one to identify the domain of robust balance as delimited to a “window of vitality” that circumscribes sustainable behavior in ecosystems. Sensitivity analysis on this robustness function with respect to each individual component process quantifies the value of that link “at the margin”, i.e., how much each unit of that process contributes to moving the system towards its most sustainable configuration. The analysis provides heretofore missing theoretical justification for efforts to preserve biodiversity whenever systems have become too streamlined and efficient. Similar considerations should apply as well to economic systems, where fostering diversity among economic processes and currencies appears warranted in the face of over-development.     

国家公园的属性结构及其对中国本土实践的启示

虽然“国家公园”概念自19世纪后半叶诞生于美国以来在全球得到了广泛传播, 但学界在国家公园本质属性的认识上还未达成共识。基于人类对事物的认识需要依赖认识其各种属性的观点, 本文对世界各国国家公园的属性和特征进行了对比研究, 然后从本质属性和非本质属性的理论视角构建了国家公园的属性结构。国家公园的本质属性应包括: (1)以自然资源为主的资源类型; (2)具有国家代表性的资源价值; (3)中央或联邦政府管控的管理体制; (4)公益性主导的资源利用。而国家公园的土地权属、面积大小、生态系统、保护重点、旅游设施、原住居民等应列入其非本质属性的范畴。最后, 文章从国家公园的建立、治理和享用3方面探讨了国家公园属性结构对我国本土实践的指导性意义和启示作用。坚持本质属性与非本质属性相结合的属性结构既是对世界各国国家公园建设和管理经验的总结, 也是我国将来正式设立和建设国家公园必须考虑的基本原则。     

Maintaining optimal state probabilities in biological systems

A biological problem is usually studied experimentally by reducing it into a number of modules. In contrast, the systems biology approach seeks to address the collective behavior of interacting molecules vis-a-vis the corresponding higher level behavior. Various attributes of a biological system are conditionally dependent on each other, and these conditionalities are usually represented through Bayesian networks for computing easily the joint probability for a state of an attribute. In this article, a genetic algorithm is investigated to a biological system, by representing it through a Bayesian network, for evaluating the optimum state probabilities of different attributes, in order to obtain a desired joint probability for a given state of an attribute. We believe that such a study would be helpful in achieving a desired health condition by maintaining various attributes of a system to their estimated optimum levels.     

Linking Industrial Ecology with Business Strategy: Creating Value for Green Product Design

As organizations practice environmental design, some discover green design positively impacts business performance. This article demonstrates how an organization can employ existing design methods and tools with the Kano technique to craft an environmental product design strategy that enhances its business strategy. These tools expand the toolbox of the industrial ecologist and enable the link between green design and business improvement. The Kano technique was developed in the 1980s to facilitate design of innovative products. We also introduce terminology and concepts such as “voices of the environment,”“environmental knowledge management,”“environmental profile,” and “environmental product attribute” in order to bridge the gap between industrial ecology and business concerns. To demonstrate how an organization can find the synergy between business value and environmental value, this article describes three activities and their corresponding tools and exhibits their use with industry examples. First, we present techniques by which designers can identify and prioritize customers and stakeholders who voice both environmental and business concerns. Second, we describe how voice‐of‐the‐customer translation techniques can be used to efficiently collect and translate data from these customers and stakeholders into critical environmental product and service attributes. Third, we discuss how the Kano technique can be used to connect green design to business strategy by making visible the variety of stakeholder and customer perceptions of these critical environmental attributes. Examples then demonstrate how those perceptions suggest appropriate approaches for integrating the critical environmental attributes into product and business strategy. Finally, we provide examples based on work done with General Electric Medical Systems (GEMS) to illustrate the design of products that improve environmental performance while adding greater perceived value for numerous customers along material‐flow value chains.     

Seeing Dogs: Human Preferences for Dog Physical Attributes

ABSTRACT

This study systematically investigated peoples' preferences for dog physical attributes in images of real-life dogs. Participants (n = 124) completed an aesthetic-preference test wherein they viewed 80 image pairs of mixed-breed adult dogs and were asked which image they “liked best.” In each image pair, the two dog images appeared to be nearly identical, but unbeknownst to participants, the images differed slightly in that one physical characteristic had been manipulated. By altering a single physical characteristic in each image pair, participant preference for each of 14 different physical attributes could be investigated over the course of the study. The feature manipulations examined theories relating to Kindchenschema (an infantile appearance, per Konrad lorenz), ostensive human similarity, the process of domestication, as well as differences in attribute size and symmetry. The results showed that participants preferred some features associated with the infant schema—large eyes and wider-set eyes. They also preferred certain human-like attributes: colored irises and a distinct upturn of the commissure, seeming to capture a smile. By contrast, participants did not reveal a preference for physical characteristics relating to feature size, symmetry or the process of domestication. The findings suggest that identifiable physical attributes of domestic dogs have aesthetic value and, additionally, that human preferences for aesthetic differences can be systematically investigated. Given that people attend to and care about the way dogs look, the effects of particular physical attributes on peoples' preferences merit investigation.     

Automated image analysis with the potential for process quality control applications in stem cell maintenance and differentiation

The translation of laboratory processes into scaled production systems suitable for manufacture is a significant challenge for cell based therapies; in particular there is a lack of analytical methods that are informative and efficient for process control. Here the potential of image analysis as one part of the solution to this issue is explored, using pluripotent stem cell colonies as a valuable and challenging exemplar. The Cell‐IQ live cell imaging platform was used to build image libraries of morphological culture attributes such as colony “edge,” “core periphery” or “core” cells. Conventional biomarkers, such as Oct3/4, Nanog, and Sox‐2, were shown to correspond to specific morphologies using immunostaining and flow cytometry techniques. Quantitative monitoring of these morphological attributes in‐process using the reference image libraries showed rapid sensitivity to changes induced by different media exchange regimes or the addition of mesoderm lineage inducing cytokine BMP4. The imaging sample size to precision relationship was defined for each morphological attribute to show that this sensitivity could be achieved with a relatively low imaging sample. Further, the morphological state of single colonies could be correlated to individual colony outcomes; smaller colonies were identified as optimum for homogenous early mesoderm differentiation, while larger colonies maintained a morphologically pluripotent core. Finally, we show the potential of the same image libraries to assess cell number in culture with accuracy comparable to sacrificial digestion and counting. The data supports a potentially powerful role for quantitative image analysis in the setting of in‐process specifications, and also for screening the effects of process actions during development, which is highly complementary to current analysis in optimization and manufacture. © 2015 The Authors Biotechnology Progress published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of American Institute of Chemical Engineers, 32:215–223, 2016     

Hoeverella krauseae gen. et sp. nov., an unusual uniserial cheilostome bryozoan from the campanian of hannover

Hoeverellakrauseae gen. et sp. nov. is a peculiar runner-like anascan cheilostome bryozoan known from a single well-preserved specimen encrusting a belemnite guard. The colony comprises about 60 zooids, each of fusiform/pyriform shape and having a small “opesia” within which is situated an enigmatic ring structure. Several interpretations are possible for the ring structure: “regeneration”, closure plate, foreign organism inhabiting the zooecium, or socket of articulation for an erect branch or anAetea- like erect distal tube. Unusually for a runner-like bryozoan only one branch ramification occurs in the entire colony. The systematic position ofHoeverella is uncertain; however, it may be related to the electrid genusHerpetopora.     

Bilingualism,Language Disorders and Intercultural Families in Contemporary Italy

This study aims to show how language disorders in children affect language transmission and the mixedness experience in intercultural families. To this end, it adopts a qualitative method of study based on the administration of ad hoc interviews to intercultural couples who consulted our Child Neuropsychiatry Service because of language disorders in their children. One of the main consequences, when the child of an intercultural couple presents a language disorder and a diagnostic process has to be initiated, may be interruption of the transmission of the second language, especially if it is the mother’s language. The decision to do this, which may be taken on the advice of teachers and health professionals, but also because the parents themselves often attribute their child’s language disorder to his bilingual condition, affects not only the relationship between the mother and her child, but also processes in the construction of parenthood and in the structuring of the child’s personality and the plurality of his affiliations. A clear understanding of how the dialectic between the categories of “alien” and “familiar” is managed in these contemporary families, which have to reckon with the condition of otherness, is crucial for psychiatrists and psychotherapists working in settings in which cultural difference is an issue to consider.     

Generation of reference cell lines,media, and a process platform for CHO cell biomanufacturing

Due to the favorable attributes of Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells for therapeutic proteins and antibodies biomanufacturing, companies generate proprietary cells with desirable phenotypes. One key attribute is the ability to stably express multi-gram per liter titers in chemically defined media. Cell, media, and feed diversity has limited community efforts to translate knowledge. Moreover, academic, and nonprofit researchers generally cannot study “industrially relevant” CHO cells due to limited public availability, and the time and knowledge required to generate such cells. To address these issues, a university-industrial consortium (Advanced Mammalian Biomanufacturing Innovation Center, AMBIC) has acquired two CHO “reference cell lines” from different lineages that express monoclonal antibodies. These reference cell lines have relevant production titers, key performance outcomes confirmed by multiple laboratories, and a detailed technology transfer protocol. In commercial media, titers over 2 g/L are reached. Fed-batch cultivation data from shake flask and scaled-down bioreactors is presented. Using productivity as the primary attribute, two academic sites aligned with tight reproducibility at each site. Further, a chemically defined media formulation was developed and evaluated in parallel to the commercial media. The goal of this work is to provide a universal, industrially relevant CHO culture platform to accelerate biomanufacturing innovation.     

Boring's formulation: a scheme for identifying functional neuron groups in a sensory system

In 1935 Edwin Boring proposed that each attribute of sensation reflects the activity of a different neural circuit. If this idea is valid, it could facilitate both psychophysical and neurophysiological research on sensory systems. We think it likely that Boring's formulation is correct for three reasons: 1) Different sensory attributes reflect conscious information about different parameters of a stimulus. To be measured by any device, each of these parameters must be individually computed. Different neural circuits would appear to be necessary for the nervous system to carry out these different computations. 2) Perceived information about different sensory attributes can be made to diverge by appropriate manipulations of the stimuli. If there is a rigorous relationship between conscious sensory experience and neural activity, such a divergence implies that different sensory attributes are served by different neural circuits. 3) Accurate information about a sensory attribute requires that a human observer's attention be focused on that attribute. Changes in direction of attention are thought to involve a process of switching from one neural circuit to another, and provide another way to cause perceived information about different sensory attributes to diverge.     

Zur Frage der Ambar

The social categories “Maya” and “mestizo” have been applied to denote the Yucatec Mayan people in Mexico. This article examines the cluster of perceived attributes (schemata) evoked by the terms and how they relate to each other. It shows that there is an incongruency between them along the lines of local and academic categorization, which is an implication of the different social spaces in which they arise. In spite of the incongruency and the cultural plurality evoked by their usage, the author argues that the people of Yucatán share a single culture.     

Combinations of biological attributes predict temporal dynamics of fish species in response to environmental changes

Assessing species vulnerability to environmental changes is a major challenge for conservation. Combinations of biological attributes have already been successfully used for this purpose, allowing large-scale prediction of inter-specific differences in demographic parameters (e.g. abundance) or endangered status. However, studies investigating whether biological attributes could be used to predict the temporal demographic responses of species in a changing environment are still scarce. In this work, we tackled this issue by taking advantage of a multi-decadal survey of concomitant changes in fish communities and environmental conditions within the Terminos lagoon (Mexico). Based on this rare dataset, we first characterized changes in abiotic parameters that occurred in this ecosystem since the 80s. Then, we adapted a multivariate index accounting for changes in both species abundance and occurrence to assess concomitant demographic changes for the 25 dominant fish species in the lagoon, classifying them into five various types of trajectories (“Increasing”, “Decreasing”, “Constant”, “Hump-shape” and “U-shape”). Finally, we assessed the accuracy in prediction of these temporal responses for all possible combinations of 15 biological attributes including taxonomy, ecological and life-history traits.Our results showed that fish specific demographic changes over the last 30 years could be accurately predicted (72% accuracy) using a combination of five biological attributes (spawning season, order, maximum salinity, width of salinity range, oocyte size) among which three could be related to the increase in average salinity occurred in the lagoon over this period. Appropriate sets of complementary biological attributes could similarly allow prediction of inter-specific differences in demographic changes in other areas, thereby offering an additional pragmatic tool for ecosystem managers to identify vulnerable species at the local scale.     

Mouse ES cells maintained in different pluripotency-promoting conditions differ in their neural differentiation propensity

Prior to differentiation, embryonic stem (ES) cells in culture are maintained in a so-called “undifferentiated” state, allowing derivation of multiple downstream cell lineages when induced in a directed manner, which in turn grants these cells their “pluripotent” state. The current work is based on a simple observation that the initial culture condition for maintaining mouse ES cells in an “undifferentiated” state does impact on the differentiation propensity of these cells, in this case to a neuronal fate. We point out the importance in judging the “pluripotency” of a given stem cell culture, as this clearly demonstrated that the “undifferentiated” state of these cells is not necessarily a “pluripotent” state, even for a widely used mouse ES cell line. We partly attribute this difference in the initial value of ES cells to the naïve-to-primed status of pluripotency, which in turn may affect early events of the differentiation in vitro.     

Learning from scientific literature: Can indicators for measuring success be standardized in “on the ground” restoration?

The Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) Primer identifies key ecosystem attributes for evaluating restoration outcome. Broad attribute categories could be necessary due to the large variety of restoration projects, but could make overall evaluations and assessments challenging and might hamper the development of sound and successful restoration. In this study we carry out a systematic review of scientific papers addressing evaluation of restoration outcome. We include 104 studies published after 2010 from Europe or North America, representing different types of restoration projects in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems. We explore the main ecological and socioeconomic attributes used to evaluate restoration outcome, and related indicators and specific methods applied to measure this, in relation to ecosystem and type of restoration project. We identify a wide range of indicators within each attribute, and show that very different methods are employed to measure them. This complexity reduces the opportunity for meaningful comparison and standardization of evaluation of restoration outcome, within and between ecosystems. Socioeconomic indicators are rarely used to evaluate restoration outcome, and studies including both ecological and socioeconomic indicators are nearly absent. Based on our findings we discuss whether standardization and streamlining of indicators is useful to improve the evaluation of “on the ground” restoration, or if this is not appropriate given the diversity of goals and ecosystems involved. Species‐specific traits are used in many projects and should be considered as an addition to the original SER attributes. Furthermore, we discuss the potential for restoration evaluation that encompasses not only assessment of ecological but also socioeconomic indicators.