News Blogging in Cross-Cultural Contexts: A Report on the Struggle for Voice

To assess some of the ways that blogs appear to be affecting news reporting and consumption as well as some giving a sense as to their implications for social stability, this paper presents a preliminary analysis of views and comments by bloggers in Asian countries. Data on this topic was gathered by e-mail interviews of Asian bloggers as well as by collecting writings and data from relevant websites. Analysis suggests that, in many societies in Asia and elsewhere, bloggers have become an important source of news outside of but also alongside of traditional mainstream media. A trend is observed that information and communication technologies are reconfiguring the traditional balance between the creators and consumers of news and the journalistic reporting profession. Internet blogs and mobile phones, among other technologies, have made new information and perspectives available concerning local events; they have also added important and often oppositional interpretations of the significance and meaning of those events. Thus, on both professional and economic grounds, the New Media are reducing the relative prominence of traditional news outlets as well as stature of professional journalists.

A case for restricted-domain relational learning

Monkeys and pigeons learned a same/different task with pairs that were selected from a training set of eight picture stimuli. They showed no novel-stimulus transfer and hence no abstract-concept learning. They were also tested with novel pairs of the eight training pictures (i.e., combinations that had not been used in training) and with inverted pictures of the training pairs. If the subjects had learned the task item-specifically (e.g., if—then or configural learning), they should have failed these tests, but they performed well with novel combinations of training pictures and inverted pictures, suggesting that they learned the task relationally (i.e., on the basis of the relationship between the two pictures that were presented in each trial). This somewhat paradoxical conclusion of relational learning in the absence of abstract-concept learning is contrary to most theories of abstract-concept learning. The implications of this conclusion are discussed in the context of restricted-domain relational learning.     

The development of problem-solving abilities in a population of candidate detection dogs (Canis familiaris)

Animal Cognition - Both ontogenetic and phylogenetic factors have shaped dogs’ cognitive capabilities, resulting in a heightened social sensitivity at the apparent cost of non-social...     

远程心理健康服务：应用、优势及挑战

远程心理服务(Telepsychology)是利用远程通讯技术提供心理服务的新兴心理服务方式,虽然在COVID-19疫情期间得到了广泛应用,但仍缺乏相关行业应用规范及专业培训体系。现有的远程心理服务三维模型以应用环境、应用领域、应用方式为服务框架,结合九个应用领域开展远程心理服务。我们根据已有研究提出了以咨询师、治疗方法、远程技术手段为主要因素、以来访者为中心的远程心理服务应用模型。人工智能在远程心理服务领域的应用主要包括三个方面:机器学习与人工神经网络、自然语言处理与情感分析、虚拟现实与增强现实。目前,远程心理服务正以蓬勃的态势极速发展:其在提高心理服务督导效率、减少服务成本等方面有着显著优势,同时在心理服务从业人员对远程心理服务的接受度、来访者的适应性、重视程度方面也面临着挑战。未来远程心理服务可以在监管体系、从业者培训、远程应用技术三个方面进行深入探索。     

R&D Project Selection: A Decision Process Approach

The fundamental decision problem of an R&D firm is to select projects in which to invest. Most reported models dealing with this subject use sophisticated mathematical models maximizing specific attributes of the projects without dealing with the underlying motivation of the decision maker. This paper summarizes a successful application of a decision-making process involving multicriteria in the selection of R&D projects in the Ecogen Israel Partnership. We emphasize the structure of the decision problem, with the main goal of helping the decision maker to better understand the nature of his problem. We systematically generate the objective hierarchy of the decision maker, including his main criteria, subcriteria attributes and alternatives. The ‘best’ alternative can then be found using most interactive procedures found in the literature. As the decision maker is totally involved in the entire decision-making process he is better able to understand his problem and preferences.     

On the nature of the foreign accent syndrome: A case study

A detailed acoustic analysis was conducted of the speech production of a single patient presenting with the foreign accent syndrome subsequent to a left-hemisphere stroke in the subcortical white matter of the pre-rolandic and post-rolandic gyri at the level of the body of the lateral ventricle. It was the object of this research to determine those changes which contribute to the perception of a "foreign accent." A number of acoustic parameters were investigated, including features of consonant production relating to voice, place, and manner of articulation, vowel production relating to vowel quality and duration, and speech melody relating to fundamental frequency. The results indicated that many attributes which might have contributed to the foreign quality of the patient's speech were similar to those of normal English speakers. However, a number of critical elements involving consonant and vowel production and intonation were impaired. It was hypothesized that the acoustically anomalous features are linked to a common underlying deficit relating to speech prosody. It is suggested that the normal listener categorizes this speech pattern as a foreign accent because the anomalous speech characteristics, while not a part of the English phonetic inventory, reflect stereotypical features which are a part of the universal phonetic properties found in natural language.     

Effects of the cholinomimetic drug arecoline upon aggression: Intra- vs. inter-specific allocation of attack

Systemic injections of cholinomimetic drugs have been reported to induce both rage and predatory attack in several species. In order to assess the relative contribution of each of these two behavioral patterns in the control of cholinergically induced attack, a group of adult female cats was chemically stimulated in the simultaneous presence of both a prey object and a conspecific attack object. In this choice situation stimulated cats initially tended to engage in rage attack. When a second group of subjects was tested in a successive choice situation a significantly greater number of attacks occurred against conspecifics. The results suggest that cholmergic stimulation initially induces affective attack, with somewhat less frequent incidents of predation.