The motor modules during human walking are identified using non-negative matrix factorization from surface electromyography signals. The extraction of motor modules in healthy participants is affected by the change in pre-processing of EMG signals, such as low-pass filters ; however, the effect of different pre-processing methods, such as the number of necessary gait cycles in post-stroke patients with varying steps, remains unknown. We aimed to specify that the number of GCs influenced the motor modules extracted in the consideration of LPFs (...) in post-stroke patients. In total, 10 chronic post-stroke patients walked at a self-selected speed on an overground walkway, while EMG signals were recorded from the eight muscles of paretic lower limb. To verify the number of GCs, five GC conditions were set, namely, 25, 20, 15, 10, and 5 gate cycles with three LPFs. First, the number of modules, variability accounted for, and muscle weightings extracted by the NNMF algorithm were compared between the conditions. Next, a modified NNMF algorithm, in which the activation timing profiles among different GCs were unified, was performed to compare the muscle weightings more robustly between GCs. The number of motor modules was not significantly different, regardless of the GCs. The difference in VAF and muscle weightings in the different GCs decreased with the LPF of 4 Hz. Muscle weightings in 15 GCs or less were significantly different from those in 25 GCs using the modified NNMF. Therefore, we concluded that the variability extracted motor modules by different GCs was suppressed with lower LPFs; however, 20 GCs were needed for more representative extraction of motor modules during walking in post-stroke patients. (shrink)

In this paper, we establish the first-order definability of sequents with consistent variable occurrence on bi-approximation semantics by means of the Sahlqvist–van Benthem algorithm. Then together with the canonicity results in Suzuki (2011), this allows us to establish a Sahlqvist theorem for substructural logic. Our result is not limited to substructural logic but is also easily applicable to other lattice-based logics.

In this paper, we extend the canonicity methodology in Ghilardi & Meloni (1997) to arbitrary lattice expansions, and syntactically describe canonical inequalities for lattice expansions consisting of -meet preserving operations, -multiplicative operations, adjoint pairs, and constants. This approach gives us a uniform account of canonicity for substructural and lattice-based logics. Our method not only covers existing results, but also systematically accounts for many canonical inequalities containing nonsmooth additive and multiplicative uniform operations. Furthermore, we compare our technique with the approach in (...) Dunn et al. (2005) and Gehrke et al. (2005). (shrink)

In this paper, illocutionary acts of commanding will be differentiated from perlocutionary acts that affect preferences of addressees in a new dynamic logic which combines the preference upgrade introduced in DEUL (dynamic epistemic upgrade logic) by van Benthem and Liu with the deontic update introduced in ECL II (eliminative command logic II) by Yamada. The resulting logic will incorporate J. L. Austin’s distinction between illocutionary acts as acts having mere conventional effects and perlocutionary acts as acts having real effects upon (...) attitudes and actions of agents, and help us understand why saying so can make it so in explicit performative utterances. We will also discuss how acts of commanding give rise to so-called “deontic dilemmas” and how we can accommodate most deontic dilemmas without triggering so-called “deontic explosion”. (shrink)

In this paper, we give a possible characterization of the distributivity on bi-approximation semantics. To this end, we introduce new notions of special elements on polarities and show that the distributivity is first-order definable on bi-approximation semantics. In addition, we investigate the dual representation of those structures and compare them with bi-approximation semantics for intuitionistic logic. We also discuss that two different methods to validate the distributivity—by the splitters and by the adjointness—can be explicated with the help of the axiom (...) of choice as well. (shrink)

Although it seems intuitively clear that acts of requesting are different from acts of commanding, it is not very easy to sate their differences precisely in dynamic terms. In this paper we show that it becomes possible to characterize, at least partially, the effects of acts of requesting and compare them with the effects of acts of commanding by combining dynamified deontic logic with epistemic logic. One interesting result is the following: each act of requesting is appropriately differentiated from an (...) act of commanding with the same content, but for each act of requesting, there is another act of commanding with much more complex content which updates models in exactly the same way as it does. We will also consider an application of our characterization of acts of requesting to acts of asking yes-no questions. It yields a straightforward formalization of the view of acts of asking questions as requests for information. (shrink)

Correct chromosome segregation in mitosis relies on chromosome biorientation, in which sister kinetochores attach to microtubules from opposite spindle poles prior to segregation. To establish biorientation, aberrant kinetochore–microtubule interactions must be resolved through the error correction process. During error correction, kinetochore–microtubule interactions are exchanged (swapped) if aberrant, but the exchange must stop when biorientation is established. In this article, we discuss recent findings in budding yeast, which have revealed fundamental molecular mechanisms promoting this “swap and stop” process for error correction. (...) Where relevant, we also compare the findings in budding yeast with mechanisms in higher eukaryotes. Evidence suggests that Aurora B kinase differentially regulates kinetochore attachments to the microtubule end and its lateral side and switches relative strength of the two kinetochore–microtubule attachment modes, which drives the exchange of kinetochore–microtubule interactions to resolve aberrant interactions. However, Aurora B kinase, recruited to centromeres and inner kinetochores, cannot reach its targets at kinetochore–microtubule interface when tension causes kinetochore stretching, which stops the kinetochore–microtubule exchange once biorientation is established. (shrink)

The number of competing-brands changes by new product's entry. The new product introduction is endemic among consumer packaged goods firm and is an integral component of their marketing strategy. As a new product's entry affects markets, there is a pressing need to develop market response model that can adapt to such changes. In this paper, we develop a dynamic model that capture the underlying evolution of the buying behavior associated with the new product. This extends an application of a dynamic (...) linear model, which is used by a number of time series analyses, by allowing the observed dimension to change at some point in time. Our model copes with a problem that dynamic environments entail: changes in parameter over time and changes in the observed dimension. We formulate the model with framework of a state space model. We realize an estimation of the model using modified Kalman filter/fixed interval smoother. We find that new product's entry (1) decreases brand differentiation for existing brands, as indicated by decreasing difference between cross-price elasticities; (2) decreases commodity power for existing brands, as indicated by decreasing trend; and (3) decreases the effect of discount for existing brands, as indicated by a decrease in the magnitude of own-brand price elasticities. The proposed framework is directly applicable to other fields in which the observed dimension might be change, such as economic, bioinformatics, and so forth. (shrink)

Since the realisation that the antigen‐binding regions of antibodies, the variable (V) regions, can be uncoupled from the rest of the molecule to create fragments that recognise and abrogate particular protein functions in cells, the use of antibody fragments inside cells has become an important tool in bioscience. Diverse libraries of antibody fragments plus in vivo screening can be used to isolate single chain variable fragments comprising VH and VL segments or single V‐region domains. Some of these are interfering antibody (...) fragments that compete with protein‐protein interactions, providing lead molecules for drug interactions that until now have been considered difficult or undruggable. It may be possible to deliver or express antibody fragments in target cells as macrodrugs per se. In future incarnations of intracellular antibodies, however, the structural information of the interaction interface of target and antibody fragment should facilitate development of binding site mimics as small drug‐like molecules. This is a new dawn for intracellular antibody fragments both as macrodrugs and as precursors of drugs to treat human diseases and should finally lead to the removal of the epithet of the ‘undruggable’ protein‐protein interactions. (shrink)

In the past four decades, the notion of quantum polynomial-time computability has been mathematically modeled by quantum Turing machines as well as quantum circuits. This paper seeks the third model, which is a quantum analogue of the schematic definition of recursive functions. For quantum functions mapping finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces to themselves, we present such a schematic definition, composed of a small set of initial quantum functions and a few construction rules that dictate how to build a new quantum function from (...) the existing ones. We prove that our schematic definition precisely characterizes all functions that can be computable with high success probabilities on well-formed quantum Turing machines in polynomial time, or equivalently uniform families of polynomial-size quantum circuits. Our new, schematic definition is quite simple and intuitive and, more importantly, it avoids the cumbersome introduction of the well-formedness condition imposed on a quantum Turing machine model as well as of the uniformity condition necessary for a quantum circuit model. Our new approach can further open a door to the descriptional complexity of quantum functions, to the theory of higher-type quantum functionals, to the development of new first-order theories for quantum computing, and to the designing of programming languages for real-life quantum computer. (shrink)

SOCREAL 2007: International Workshop on Philosophy and Ethics of Social Reality. Sapporo, Japan, 2007-03-09/10. Session 2: Logical Dynamics of Social Interaction.

If the notion of speech acts is to be taken seriously, it must be possible to treat speech acts as acts. The development of systems of DEL (dynamic epistemic logic) in the last two decades suggests an interesting possibility. These systems are developed on the basis of static epistemic logics by introducing model updating operations to interpret various kinds of speech acts including public announcements as well as private information transmissions as what update epistemic states of agents involved. The methods (...) used in developing DEL can be used to develop logics that deal with a much wider variety of speech acts. For example, in ECL (Eliminative Command Logic) of Yamada (2007a) and ECL II of Yamada (2007b), similar model updating operations are introduced tointerpret acts of commanding as what update deontic aspects of the situations in which agents are involved. In Yamada (2008a), ECL II is further extended so as to model acts of promising along with acts of commanding. Moreover, in Yamada (2008b), ECL II is combined with a modified version of DEUL (dynamic epistemic upgrade logic) introduced in van Benthem & Liu (2007). In the resulting logic DDPL (dynamic deontic preference logic), illocutionary acts of commanding are differentiated from preference upgrading perlocutionary acts. The development of these logics suggests a recipe for developing logics that deal with various specific speech acts: first, carefully identify the aspects affected by the speech acts you want to study; second, find the modal logic that characterizes the aspects in question; and finally, add dynamic modalities that stand for the types of the speech acts being studied and define model updating operation that interprets these speech acts as what update the very aspects. (shrink)

SOCREAL 2013 : 3rd International Workshop on Philosophy and Ethics of Social Reality 2013. Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan, 25-27 October 2013. Session 4 : Agency, Responsibility, and Intentionality.

Two-player, zero-sum, non-cooperative, blindfold games in extensive form with incomplete information are considered in this paper. Any information about past moves which players played is stored in a database, and each player can access the database. A polynomial game is a game in which, at each step, all players withdraw at most a polynomial amount of previous information from the database. We show resource-bounded determinacy of some kinds of finite, zero-sum, polynomial games whose pay-off sets are computable by non-deterministic polynomial-time (...) function-oracle Turing machines. We call a pay-off set -determined if, for any polynomial game G associated with the given pay-off set, either player has a winning strategy which is in for any subgames of G. We show that there exists an FP-strongly-determined pay-off set which is computed by an exponential-time oracle Turing machine, where FP is the set of polynomial-time computable functions. We also discuss several relationships between the determinacy of polynomial games and recursion-theoretic properties for the classes co-NP and co-NEXP. We show that the polynomial version of the axiom of choice holds under some assumption of polynomial determinacy for a pay-off set which is polynomial-time computable with parallel queries. This principle of choice implies that co-NP has the separation property. (shrink)

SOCREAL 2010: 2nd International Workshop on Philosophy and Ethics of Social Reality. Sapporo, Japan, 2010-03-27/28. Keynote Lecture 3.

After the unification process of 1918, in the former Hungarian State schools Romanian language was introduced as a teaching language. Consequently, the Hungarian as a teaching language was solely pre- served in the vocational schools. The governments showed little understanding toward the minorities’ vocational schools, aiming rather at the unification of the scholar system. The Roman Catholic Church sustained and administrated hundreds of elementary and secondary schools, many of them having a multi-secular history. Based on the documents from the churches’ (...) archives, this study presents the efforts of the Roman Catholic Church to preserve and maintain all these schools. (shrink)

The role of religion in the public space is a matter of debate. The public sphere understood as a space oriented to achieving interests of common concern, reaching social and political consensus by means of deliberation has relegated religion to the private sphere. The last decades have attested a revival of the public role of religion, a “de-privatization” of religion. This paper explores the contemporary influence of religious beliefs and liturgical practice on issues of public concern focusing on the statements (...) and liturgical gestures of Pope Francis, notably regarding the disenfranchised and the refugees, as well as his engagement for the environment. The statements and liturgical gestures of Pope Francis have challenged the dissociation between religious practice and social ethics, and have returned religion to the forefront of public debates. A symbolic example is his unconventional practice of a traditional rite, that of the washing of the feet during liturgical celebrations on Holy Thursday. This classical liturgical rite, brought to public attention through the media, has become the vehicle of Francis’ social ethical views, and due to his involvement in the refugee-debate, a powerful political statement. Such statements are not limited to Catholics or individuals of other denominations, but contribute to the agenda of public discussions. (shrink)

Dans quelle mesure peut-on reconnaître certaines influences du naturalisme français, mouvement éminemment représenté par Émile Zola, dans les œuvres romanesques de naturalistes américains tels que Dreiser et Norris? Stephen Crane, l’un de ces derniers, nie l’influence des œuvres romanesques zoliennes sur son chef d’œuvre, Maggie : A Girl of the Streets (1893). Pourtant, en lisant cette nouvelle de l’écrivain américain, on peut bel et bien retrouver des motifs zoliens, ce qui contredirait son affirmation. Il existe, en effet, des rapports d’intertextualité (...) avec certains romans de Zola. En prenant cette idée comme point de départ, nous nous proposons de réfléchir à la représentation de l’espace urbain, notamment à Paris dans L’Assommoir, ainsi qu’aux personnages féminins de ce roman, pour mettre en évidence l’importance de l’idéalisation de la vie rurale. En ce sens, nous voulons prendre ces aspects comme points de comparaison entre Zola et Crane. Comment, chez ce dernier, sont représentées la ville de New-York et les personnages féminins? In fine, cela permettra d’aboutir à une réflexion plus globale, tout en étant précise, sur les particularités de la littérature naturaliste des deux côtés de l’Atlantique. (shrink)

This essay consists of two parts. In the first part we show in general outline the development of modern Japanese philosophy since 1867. And as one of the typical products of that process we analyse in the second part the metaphysics of the late Prof. Nishida.