Gender differences, responsiveness and memory of a potentially painful event in hermit crabs

Nonreflexive responses to a noxious event and prolonged memory are key criteria of a pain experience. In a previous study, hermit crabs, Pagurus bernhardus, that received a small electric shock within their shell often temporarily evacuated the shell and some groomed their abdomen and/or moved away from their vital resource. Most, however, returned to the shell. When offered a new shell 20 s later, shocked crabs were more likely than nonshocked crabs to approach and move into a new shell and did so more quickly (Elwood & Appel 2009, Animal Behaviour, 77, 1243-1246). Here we examined how increasing the time between the shock and the offering of a new shell influences the response. There was evidence of a memory of the aversive shock that lasted at least 1 day. Crabs tested after 30 min and 1 day were more likely to approach the shell and new shells were more likely to be taken 30 min after the shock. Shocked crabs approached the new shell more quickly and used fewer probes of the chelipeds prior to moving in and these results were stable over time and significant for specific times up to 1 day. Females were more likely than males to evacuate shells and did so after fewer shocks. These results extend previous work and demonstrate an extended memory of having been shocked. The findings are consistent with respect to criteria for pain that are accepted for vertebrates.

Memory-Centric Hardware Synthesis from Dataflow Models

Generation of hardware architectures directly from dataflow representations is increasingly being considered as research moves toward system level design methodologies. Creation of networks of IP cores to implement actor functionality is a common approach to the problem, but often the memory sub-systems produced using these techniques are inefficiently utilised. This paper explores some of the issues in terms of memory organisation and accesses when developing systems from these high level representations. Using a template matching design study, challenges such as modelling memory reuse and minimising buffer requirements are examined, yielding results with significantly less memory requirements and costly off-chip memory accesses.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A People's War

The conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is one of the most enduring and complex in the modern world. But, why did the conflict break out? Who is demanding what, and why is peace so difficult to achieve?

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict tackles the subject and analyses the conflict from its historical roots in the late nineteenth century to the present attempts at conflict resolution in the twenty-first century.

Framing the debate and analysis around issues such as Zionism, Palestinian nationalism, international peace efforts, the refugees, state-building, democracy and religious opposition and highlighted by first hand quotes and sources of the conflict from its major participants, Beverley Milton-Edwards explores the deep impact of the conflict on regional politics in the Middle East and why the enmity between Palestinians and Israelis has become a number one global issue drawing in the world’s most important global actors.

An essential insight into the complexities of one of the world’s most enduring conflicts between Israelis and Palestinians, this textbook is designed to make a complex subject accessible to all. Key features include a chronology of events and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter.

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is an ideal and authoritative introduction into aspects of politics in Israel, among the Palestinians – a vitally important issue for those studying the politics of the Middle East.

SoC memory hierarchy derivation from dataflow graphs

Hardware synthesis from dataflow graphs of signal processing systems is a growing research area as focus shifts to high level design methodologies. For data intensive systems, dataflow based synthesis can lead to an inefficient usage of memory due to the restrictive nature of synchronous dataflow and its inability to easily model data reuse. This paper explores how dataflow graph changes can be used to drive both the on-chip and off-chip memory organisation and how these memory architectures can be mapped to a hardware implementation. By exploiting the data reuse inherent to many image processing algorithms and by creating memory hierarchies, off-chip memory bandwidth can be reduced by a factor of a thousand from the original dataflow graph level specification of a motion estimation algorithm, with a minimal increase in memory size. This analysis is verified using results gathered from implementation of the motion estimation algorithm on a Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGA, where the delay between the memories and processing elements drops from 14.2 ns down to 1.878 ns through the refinement of the memory architecture. Care must be taken when modeling these algorithms however, as inefficiencies in these models can be easily translated into overuse of hardware resources.

Architecture, memory and historical continuity in Old Cairo

The hawari (local communities) of Old Cairo resemble a unique societal context whose history is actively involved in the contemporary everyday production of local habits, traditions and social practice. By the virtue of its durability and ability to survive, Architecture brings events and traditions of the past alive into the present through the spatial transformation, social practice and the value of the historical-fabric. The presence of buildings and houses from different historical periods has helped the local community’s memory to carry social practices over from one generation to another. This article explores the relationship between architecture, memory and everyday social practices through determining the way architecture moderates community experiences and communicates narratives among generations in haret al-Darb al-Asfar in old Cairo. Architecture emerges as a moderator of cross-time communication and as physical elements that help visualize history, situate values and materialize local traditions in old Cairo. Architecture, as process and product this article reports, works as agent of continuity, which in conjunction with the narrators, brings the full experience of the past alive in the present and helps guide future generations.