Personality from a cognitive-biological perspective

The term “personality” is used to describe a distinctive and relatively stable set of mental traits that aim to explain the organism's behavior. The concept of personality that emerged in human psychology has been also applied to the study of non-human organisms from birds to horses. In this paper, I critically review the concept of personality from an interdisciplinary perspective, and point to some ideas that may be used for developing a cognitive-biological theory of personality. Integrating theories and research findings from various fields such as cognitive ethnology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience, I argue that the common denominator of various personality theories are neural systems of threat/trust management and their emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions. In this context, personality may be also conceived as a meta-heuristics both human and non-human organisms apply to model and predict the behavior of others. The paper concludes by suggesting a minimal computational model of personality that may guide future research.     

Colored conical emission in BBO crystal induced by intense femtosecond pulses

We present the experimental and theoretical study of colored conical emission (CCE) during intense femtosecond pulses propagating in a β-barium borate (BBO) crystal. CCE revealed special nonlinear dynamics of the strong coupling between the fundamental and second harmonic pulses due to the spatiotemporal modulation instability (MI). The underlying physics of CCE involve three three-photon processes, according to which the beam angular spectra was calculated on the phase-matching conditions and accords with the experimental observation.     

Acoustic correlates of caller identity and affect intensity in the vowel-like grunt vocalizations of baboons

Comparative, production-based research on animal vocalizations can allow assessments of continuity in vocal communication processes across species, including humans, and may aid in the development of general frameworks relating specific constitutional attributes of callers to acoustic-structural details of their vocal output. Analyses were undertaken on vowel-like baboon grunts to examine variation attributable to caller identity and the intensity of the affective state underlying call production. Six hundred six grunts from eight adult females were analyzed. Grunts derived from 128 bouts of calling in two behavioral contexts: concerted group movements and social interactions involving mothers and their young infants. Each context was subdivided into a high- and low-arousal condition. Thirteen acoustic features variously predicted to reflect variation in either caller identity or arousal intensity were measured for each grunt bout, including tempo-, source- and filter-related features. Grunt bouts were highly individually distinctive, differing in a variety of acoustic dimensions but with some indication that filter-related features contributed disproportionately to individual distinctiveness. In contrast, variation according to arousal condition was associated primarily with tempo- and source-related features, many matching those identified as vehicles of affect expression in other nonhuman primate species and in human speech and other nonverbal vocal signals.     

Current diffusion and efficiency droop in vertical light emitting diodes

Current diffusion is an old issue, nevertheless, the relationship between the current diffusion and the efficiency of light emitting diodes(LEDs) needs to be further quantitatively clarified. By incorporating current crowding effect(CCE) into the conventional ABC model, we have theoretically and directly correlated the current diffusion and the internal quantum efficiency(IQE), light extraction efficiency(LEE), and external quantum efficiency(EQE) droop of the lateral LEDs.However, questions still exist for the vertical LEDs(V-LEDs). Here firstly the current diffusion length L_s(I) and L_s(II) have been clarified. Based on this, the influence of CCE on the EQE, IQE, and LEE of V-LEDs were investigated. Specifically to our V-LEDs with moderate series resistivity, L_s(III) was developed by combining L_s(I) and L_s(II), and the CCE effect on the performance of V-LEDs was investigated. The wall-plug efficiency(WPE) of V-LEDs ware investigated finally. Our works provide a deep understanding of the current diffusion status and the correlated efficiency droop in V-LEDs, thus would benefit the V-LEDs' chip design and further efficiency improvement.     

The legacy of S Chandrasekhar (1910–1995)

Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, known simply as Chandra in the scientific world, is one of the foremost scientists of the 20th century. In celebrating his birth centenary, I present a biographical portrait of an extraordinary, but a highly private individual unknown to the world at large. Drawing upon his own “A Scientific Autobiography,” I reflect upon his legacy as a scientist and a great human being.     

Influence of geography on language competition

Competition between languages or cultural traits diffusing in the same geographical area is studied combining the model of Abrams and Strogatz with a model of human dispersal on an inhomogeneous substrate. Also, the effect of population growth is discussed. It is shown through numerical simulations that the final configuration of the languages can be strongly affected by geographical and historical factors. These factors are not related to the dynamics of culture transmission, but rather to initial population distributions as well as geographical boundaries and inhomogeneities, which modulate the diffusion process.     

Finding good acoustic features for parrot vocalizations: the feature generation approach

A crucial step in the understanding of vocal behavior of birds is to be able to classify calls in the repertoire into meaningful types. Methods developed to this aim are limited either because of human subjectivity or because of methodological issues. The present study investigated whether a feature generation system could categorize vocalizations of a bird species automatically and effectively. This procedure was applied to vocalizations of African gray parrots, known for their capacity to reproduce almost any sound of their environment. Outcomes of the feature generation approach agreed well with a much more labor-intensive process of a human expert classifying based on spectrographic representation, while clearly out-performing other automated methods. The method brings significant improvements in precision over commonly used bioacoustical analyses. As such, the method enlarges the scope of automated, acoustics-based sound classification.     

Analysis of data transmission technique based on pulsed laser

Pulsed lasers are used mainly in lidar systems as sources of short and highly energetic light pulses. In data transmission systems continuous wave lasers are typically applied, however it is also possible to use pulsed lasers in such systems. Such approach seems to be especially reasonable for devices where a pulsed laser is applied anyway and executes another function (rangefinding). The article discusses a data transmission concept based on a pulsed laser technology. Advantages and limits of such a transmission method are described. Influence of individual transmission elements on the effective data transmission speed is analysed.     

Lattice Boltzmann methods on the ClearSpeed Advance™ accelerator board

Numerical analysts and programmers are currently facing a conceptual change in processor technology. Multicore concepts, coprocessors and accelerators are becoming a vital part in scientific computing. The new hardware techno- logies lead to new paradigms and require adapted methodologies and techniques in numerical simulation. These developments play an important role in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) where many highly CPU-time demanding problems arise. In this paper, we propose a parallel lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) in the context of a coprocessor technology, the ClearSpeed Advance™ accelerator board. Implementations of LBMs on parallel architectures benefit from localities of the necessary interactions and the regular structure of the underlying meshes. The considered board supports high-level parallelism and double precision conforming to the IEEE 754 standard. However, the solution process relies on a huge amount of data which needs to propagate along the mesh. This prototypical fact shows up the bottleneck of internal communication bandwidth and indicates the limits of this type of small-scale parallel systems.     

Experimental Identification and Study of Coloured Conical Emission in Quadratic Nonlinear Media

We have explicitly identified coloured conical emission （CCE） and noncollinear optical parametric generation （OPC） by spectrum characterizations. With an experimental setup providing different pump pulse durations, CCE and noncollinear OPG are observed both alternatively and simultaneously. Comparisons between CCE and noncollinear OPC are studied. Accumulation behaviour of modulational instabilities is observed in our two-crystal cascaded configuration, which results in enhancement or depression of the CCE formation.     

Measure for measure

The present system of measures for length, weight and capacity (volume) originates from scientific ideas expressed during the French Revolution in 1789. The history of a compatible unit of length, however, turns out to be less of a scientific but rather of a political character. Here reports to the Philosophical Magazine made in the first quarter of the nineteenth century are used to trace the cultural split between meters and inches, and between kilograms and pounds, that can be experienced in many parts of the world.     

Role of reversibility in viral capsid growth: a paradigm for self-assembly

Self-assembly at submicroscopic scales is an important but little understood phenomenon. A prominent example is virus capsid growth, whose underlying behavior can be modeled using simple particles that assemble into polyhedral shells. Molecular dynamics simulation of shell formation in the presence of an atomistic solvent provides new insight into the self-assembly mechanism, notably that growth proceeds via a cascade of strongly reversible steps and, despite the large variety of possible intermediates, only a small fraction of highly bonded forms appear on the pathway.     

飞秒激光泵浦I类BBO晶体中自发参量下转换的研究

实验研究了飞秒脉冲激光泵浦I类BBO晶体中自发参量下转换效应,以及产生的彩色锥形辐射现象.系统分析了各参量对二次谐波转换效率及彩色锥形辐射现象的影响.研究结果表明:蓝绿色锥形辐射具有最大的发散角,这与相位匹配理论模拟结果吻合|正入射时,增大泵浦光强及晶体厚度均会引起彩色锥形辐射亮度增加,且最大出射角中心波长往长波移动|不同光束偏振态下可依次观察到彩色锥形辐射、超连续现象.     

庙底沟遗址出土仰韶文化彩陶的科学研究

彩陶文化作为新石器时期的重大发明,改变了远古先民的审美方式,而著名的仰韶文化以其彩陶的优美造型、绚丽色彩和丰富的纹饰揭示了原始的艺术特征,承载了史前时期重要的社会文化信息。而利用现代光谱分析技术准确、无损和微损的特点,可以为文物保护的研究提供更科学的技术支撑。研究应用相位辅助光学三维扫描、多光谱成像、X射线荧光、激光拉曼光谱分析技术,对河南省陕县庙底沟遗址出土的新石器时代晚期仰韶文化彩陶碗进行面、点相结合的综合分析,获得了较为完整的文物物理和化学信息。利用三维扫描技术所构建的彩陶碗数字化模型对样品进行了几何尺寸的非接触测量和虚拟修复,利用多光谱成像技术所获得的灰度图像对样品表面化学特征相似区域进行了区分,结合X射线荧光和激光拉曼光谱分析技术对彩陶残片的分析结果,确定了所分析彩陶样品的主要化学成分特征和颜料物相组成。综合研究结果,提出了建立彩陶文物多源信息数字化模型的构想,为这类文物的数字化保护和展示提供了基础科学信息。     

Substituent effects on the gas-phase fragmentation reactions of protonated peptides containing benzylamine-derivatized lysyl residues

Motivated by the need for chemical strategies designed to tune peptide fragmentation to selective cleavage reactions, benzyl ring substituent influence on the relative formation of carbocation elimination (CCE) products from peptides with benzylamine-derivatized lysyl residues has been examined using collision-induced dissociation (CID) tandem mass spectrometry. Unsubstituted benzylamine-derivatized peptides yield a mixture of products derived from amide backbone cleavage and CCE. The latter involves side-chain cleavage of the derivatized lysyl residue to form a benzylic carbocation [C(7)H(7)](+) and an intact peptide product ion [(MH(n))(n+) - (C(7)H(7))(+)]((n-1)+). The CCE pathway is contingent upon protonation of the secondary ε-amino group (N(ε)) of the derivatized lysyl residue. Using the Hammett methodology to evaluate the electronic contributions of benzyl ring substituents on chemical reactivity, a direct correlation was observed between changes in the CCE product ion intensity ratios (relative to backbone fragmentation) and the Hammett substituent constants, σ, of the corresponding substituents. There was no correlation between the substituent-influenced gas-phase proton affinity of N(ε) and the relative ratios of CCE product ions. However, a strong correlation was observed between the π orbital interaction energies (ΔE(int)) of the eliminated benzylic carbocation and the logarithm of the relative ratios, indicating the predominant factor in the CCE pathway is the substituent effect on the level of hyperconjugation and resonance stability of the eliminated benzylic carbocation. This work effectively demonstrates the applicability of σ (and ΔE(int)) as substituent selection parameters for the design of benzyl-based peptide-reactive reagents which tune CCE product formation as desired for specific applications.     

基于格式化文本颜色的安全增强信息隐藏方法

随着办公自动化的日益普及,文本成为信息存储和传输的重要载体,基于文本的信息隐藏技术凸显研究价值。针对文本的信息隐藏方法存在隐藏容量小、安全性低的特点,提出了基于格式化文本中字体RGB颜色值的安全增强信息隐藏方法,依据Kerckhoffs准则和康托展开式设计了隐藏信息的编码方法和信息隐藏过程,分析了该方法的使用条件、隐藏容量、安全性和适用性。通过实验验证,该方法具有较好的信息隐藏容量,适用范围广泛且具安全性较强,具有一定的实用价值。     

The origins of language and the evolution of music: A comparative perspective

According to Darwin [Darwin, CR. The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. London: John Murray; 1871], the human musical faculty 'must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed'. Music is a human cultural universal that serves no obvious adaptive purpose, making its evolution a puzzle for evolutionary biologists. This review examines Darwin's hypothesis of similarities between language and music indicating a shared evolutionary history. In particular, the fact that both are human universals, have phrase structure, and entail learning and cultural transmission, suggests that any theory of the evolution of language will have implications for the evolution of music, and vice versa. The argument starts by describing variable predispositional musical capabilities and the ontogeny of prosodic communication in human infants and young children, presenting comparative data regarding communication systems commonly present in living nonhuman primate species. Like language, the human music faculty is based on a suite of abilities, some of which are shared with other primates and some of which appear to be uniquely human. Each of these subcomponents may have a different evolutionary history, and should be discussed separately. After briefly considering possible functions of human music for language acquisition, the review ends by discussing the phylogenetic history of music. It concludes that many strands of evidence support Darwin's hypothesis of an intermediate stage of human evolutionary history, characterized by a communication system that resembled music more closely than language, but was identical to neither. This pre-linguistic system, which could probably referred to as "prosodic protolanguage", provided a precursor for both modern language and music.     

The physics of colour vision

Investigation of human colour vision relies primarily upon psycho-physical methods which require active observer participation in the experiments. The principal results of such experiments are stated and discussed in relation to the functional organisation of human colour vision. Generally, objective techniques, such as electro-physiology, are employed in the study of colour vision responses in non-human vertebrate species. The structural and functional organisation of vertebrate colour vision as revealed by these objective methods is described and the relationship between objective and psycho-physical results examined. Other sections of the article are concerned with defective colour vision and with parametric variations in normal colour vision. It is concluded that a reasonably consistent scheme for the organization of human colour vision emerges from the various types of experimental investigation, and that this scheme is adequate for the interpretation of a variety of colour vision phenomena.     

自旋轨道耦合和磁场对准一维铁磁/半导体/铁磁系统中电子输运性质的影响

利用传递矩阵方法，我们计算了自旋轨道耦合和磁场对准一维铁磁/半导体/铁磁系统中电子输运性质的影响。计算结果发现，透射系数的振幅随磁场增加而增大。在反铁磁排列时，即使在磁场作用下，上、下自旋电子具有相同的透射系数。与不加磁场时的情况相反，在一定的磁场和耦合强度时，铁磁排列中，上自旋电子的透射系数大于下自旋电子的，而且出现了自旋反转。     

Lateral IBIC characterization of single crystal synthetic diamond detectors

In order to evaluate the charge collection efficiency (CCE) profile of single‐crystal diamond devices based on a p‐type/intrinsic/metal configuration, a lateral Ion Beam Induced Charge (IBIC) analysis was performed over their cleaved cross sections using a 2 MeV proton microbeam. CCE profiles in the depth direction were extracted from the cross‐sectional maps at variable bias voltage. IBIC spectra relevant to the depletion region extending beneath the frontal Schottky electrode show a 100% CCE, with a spectral resolution of about 1.5%. The dependence of the width of the high efficiency region from applied bias voltage allows the constant residual doping concentration of the active region to be evaluated. The region where the electric field is absent shows an exponentially decreasing CCE profile, from which it is possible to estimate the diffusion length of the minority carriers by means of a drift–diffusion model. (© 2011 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)