Neural correlates of language learning in adults

The human language-learning ability persists throughout life, indicating considerable flexibility at the cognitive and neural level. This ability spans from expanding the vocabulary in the mother tongue to acquisition of a new language with its lexicon and grammar. The present thesis consists of five studies that tap both of these aspects of adult language learning by using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during language processing and language learning tasks. The thesis shows that learning novel phonological word forms, either in the native tongue or when exposed to a foreign phonology, activates the brain in similar ways. The results also show that novel native words readily become integrated in the mental lexicon. Several studies in the thesis highlight the left temporal cortex as an important brain region in learning and accessing phonological forms. Incidental learning of foreign phonological word forms was reflected in functionally distinct temporal lobe areas that, respectively, reflected short-term memory processes and more stable learning that persisted to the next day. In a study where explicitly trained items were tracked for ten months, it was found that enhanced naming-related temporal and frontal activation one week after learning was predictive of good long-term memory. The results suggest that memory maintenance is an active process that depends on mechanisms of reconsolidation, and that these process vary considerably between individuals. The thesis put special emphasis on studying language learning in the context of language production. The neural foundation of language production has been studied considerably less than that of perceptive language, especially on the sentence level. A well-known paradigm in language production studies is picture naming, also used as a clinical tool in neuropsychology. This thesis shows that accessing the meaning and phonological form of a depicted object are subserved by different neural implementations. Moreover, a comparison between action and object naming from identical images indicated that the grammatical class of the retrieved word (verb, noun) is less important than the visual content of the image. In the present thesis, the picture naming was further modified into a novel paradigm in order to probe sentence-level speech production in a newly learned miniature language. Neural activity related to grammatical processing did not differ between the novel language and the mother tongue, but stronger neural activation for the novel language was observed during the planning of the upcoming output, likely related to more demanding lexical retrieval and short-term memory. In sum, the thesis aimed at examining language learning by combining different linguistic domains, such as phonology, semantics, and grammar, in a dynamic description of language processing in the human brain.

Towards adoption of eLearning technologies at Lappeenranta University of Technology: Understanding Teachers‟ Adoption of Blackboard Learning System

The electronic learning has become crucial in higher education with increased usage of learning management systems as a key source of integration on distance learning. The objective of this study is to understand how university teachers are influenced to use and adopt web-based learning management systems. Blackboard, as one of the systems used internationally by various universities is applied as a case. Semi-structured interviews were made with professors and lecturers who are using Blackboard at Lappeenranta University of Technology. The data collected were categorized under constructs adapted from Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and interpretation and discussion were based on reviewed literature. The findings suggest that adoption of learning management systems by LUT teachers is highly influenced by perceived usefulness, facilitating conditions and gained experience. The findings also suggest that easiness of using the system and social influence appear as medium influence of adoption for teachers at LUT.

Notes on Emerging Technologies

This dissertation considers the impact of technology foresight in innovation within the context of a technology driven development. The main hypothesis made was that by using different methods of foresight in the industry level significant value could be created. The question was approached through a case study in portable fuel cell technology. The theoretical background of the study draws from Innovation, Product Development, Management of Technology, and Technology Foresight. The connection within the topics is made by analyzing foresight, not in a policy view as often done in Europe, but in a micro-level. Focusing mostly on how a technology driven development scenario could be analyzed. The study is based on a bibliometric, extrapolation and patent analysis within the context of a case study. In addition, a large two-year Delphi study was conducted. The study was finalized with a scenario work on the future possibilities of the case study technology. Original publications also consider several methodological issues. In the context of the case study, the study questions the practicality of establishing a portable fuel cell technology in Finland showing several impractical assumptions has been made. In a more conceptual level, the study makes notions on two underlying factors: policy-push technologies and growth of data. Policy-push questions in which level a policy effort towards a single technology is practical. The European foresight effort is more directed towards policy decisions in contrast to US foresight, which is to some extent corporate driven. Although the policy-based foresight has produced significant results in the European context, policy led efforts towards a single technology are challenging. Growth of data argues on the challenges produced by the large-scale application of quantitative measures of foresight. Bibliometric studies and trend extrapolations have been taken advantage of the increasing number of databases made available, and used these as the basis for forecasts. However, the relationship with actual development and quantitative evidence is still unproven.

Rainfall erosivity for the State of Rio de Janeiro estimated by artificial neural network

The Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) are mathematical models method capable of estimating non-linear response plans. The advantage of these models is to present different responses of the statistical models. Thus, the objective of this study was to develop and to test ANNs for estimating rainfall erosivity index (EI30) as a function of the geographical location for the state of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and generating a thematic visualization map. The characteristics of latitude, longitude e altitude using ANNs were acceptable to estimating EI30 and allowing visualization of the space variability of EI30. Thus, ANN is a potential option for the estimate of climatic variables in substitution to the traditional methods of interpolation.

Determination of the influence of the variation of reducing and non-reducing sugars on coffee quality with use of artificial neural network

The present study aimed at evaluating the use of Artificial Neural Network to correlate the values resulting from chemical analyses of samples of coffee with the values of their sensory analyses. The coffee samples used were from the Coffea arabica L., cultivars Acaiá do Cerrado, Topázio, Acaiá 474-19 and Bourbon, collected in the southern region of the state of Minas Gerais. The chemical analyses were carried out for reducing and non-reducing sugars. The quality of the beverage was evaluated by sensory analysis. The Artificial Neural Network method used values from chemical analyses as input variables and values from sensory analysis as output values. The multiple linear regression of sensory analysis values, according to the values from chemical analyses, presented a determination coefficient of 0.3106, while the Artificial Neural Network achieved a level of 80.00% of success in the classification of values from the sensory analysis.

Swine manure post-treatment technologies for pathogenic organism inactivation

Swine manure agricultural use is a common practice in Brazil. Their physic-chemical characteristics favor its use as biofertilizer, but the presence of pathogens may become a risk to human health. This research presents a qualitative study of the main alternatives of pig manure disinfection, analyzing efficiency, advantages and limitations of each procedure. The disinfection studies reported in literature are based on the following treatments: alkaline, thermal, biological, chemical, and physical. The greater efficiencies are in thermal treatment (> 4 log: 60 °C), chemical treatment (3 to 4 log: 30mg Cl- L-1; 3 to 4 log: 40 mg O3 L-1) and physical treatment (3 a 4 log: 220 mJ UV radiation cm-2). The biological treatment (anaerobiosis) also promotes the pathogen reduction of swine manure, however with lower efficiency (1 to 2 log). The selection of the treatment should consider: implementation and operation cost, necessity of preliminary treatment, efficiency obtained and destination of the treated manure (agricultural use, water reuse). Brazilian regulation does not have specific guidelines for the microbiological quality of animal production effluents that is very important to be considered due to confined animal feeding operation transformation in the last years in the country.

Application of artificial neural networks as an alternative to volumetric water balance in drip irrigation management in watermelon crop

Precision irrigation seeks to establish strategies which achieve an efficient ratio between the volume of water used (reduction in input) and the productivity obtained (increase in production). There are several studies in the literature on strategies for achieving this efficiency, such as those dealing with the method of volumetric water balance (VWB). However, it is also of great practical and economic interest to set up versatile implementations of irrigation strategies that: (i) maintain the performance obtained with other implementations, (ii) rely on few computational resources, (iii) adapt well to field conditions, and (iv) allow easy modification of the irrigation strategy. In this study, such characteristics are achieved when using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to determine the period of irrigation for a watermelon crop in the Irrigation Perimeter of the Lower Acaraú, in the state of Ceará, Brazil. The Volumetric Water Balance was taken as the standard for comparing the management carried out with the proposed implementation of ANN. The statistical analysis demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed management, which is able to replace VWB as a strategy in automation.

Realidade virtual e robótica em cirurgia: aonde chegamos e para onde vamos?

Minimally Invasive Surgery, Telesurgery, Robotics and Virtual Reality represent the technological frontiers that have revolutionized operating practices nowadays. These new technologies aim at improving the quality of assistance offered to patients; thus, they demand from the medical staff more effective measures as far as scientific research, training and expenditure of time and financial resources are concerned. In the past, surgeons have led several medical revolutions, such as the use of antiseptic surgical methods by Semelweiss, the use of anesthesia by Warren, antibiotic therapy, the transplants and the onset of the minimally invasive surgery by Mouret and Perissat. The objective of this article is to present the outreach of this new technology which comprises minimal access, computing, robotics and teletransmission. We have concluded that the new technologies developed in the medical field in the last decades, will offer new options and challenges for the treatment of the surgical patient, leading the scientific knowledge to a new era, the one of the virtual environment.

Advanced welding technologies used for arctic metal structures

Rapid depletion of easy-to-access fossil fuel, predominantly, oil and gas resources has now necessitated increase in need to develop new oil and gas sources in ever more remote and hostile environments. This is necessary in order to explore more oil and gas resources to meet rapidly rising long-term energy demand in the world, both at present and in the nearest future. Arctic is one of these harsh environments, where enormous oil and gas resources are available, containing about 20% of the world total oil and gas, but the environmental conditions are very harsh and hostile. However, virtually all the facilities required for the exploration and development of this new energy source are constructed with metals as well as their alloys and are predominantly joined together by welding processes and technologies. Meanwhile, due to entirely different environment from the usual moderate temperate region, conventional welding technologies, common metals and their alloys cannot be applied as this Arctic environment demand metals structures with very high toughness and strength properties under extremely low temperature. This is due to the fact that metals transit from ductility to brittleness as the temperature moves toward extreme negative values. Hence, this research work investigates and presents the advanced welding technologies applicable to Arctic metal structures which can give satisfactory weldments under active Arctic service conditions. .

Dosagem de folatos maternos e fetais, séricos e eritrocitários em malformações por defeito de fechamento do tubo neural no feto

Objetivos: avaliar os níveis de folatos maternos e fetais gestações com malformações por defeitos de fechamento do tubo neural (DFTN). Métodos: o estudo foi do tipo caso-controle, no qual 14 casos de fetos com DFTN (grupo estudo) e 14 casos de fetos com outras malformações (grupo controle) foram estudados em gestantes de baixo risco para DFTN. Propusemo-nos a dosar o ácido fólico, na sua forma total e metilada, nos compartimentos fetal e materno, utilizando dosagens séricas e tissulares (eritrocitárias), assim como o volume corpuscular médio, o hematócrito e a hemoglobina. As coletas foram realizadas imediatamente antes da interrupção da gestação. Os resultados nos dois grupos foram comparados pelo teste t de Student, método de amostras pareados pela idade gestacional. Resultados: não se encontrou diferença nas taxas de folatos fetais e nos parâmetros hematológicos dos fetos, entre os dois grupos. Por outro lado, taxas anormalmente baixas de folatos foram encontradas nos eritrócitos das mães portadoras de fetos com DFTN, tanto para as formas totais(293,9 ng/mL contra 399,1 ng/mL no grupo controle, p=0,01) quanto para as formas metiladas (201,9 ng/mL contra 314,0 ng/mL para o grupo controle, p=0,02). Os folatos séricos maternos não se mostraram diferentes nos grupos estudo e controle. Conclusão: este estudo demonstrou que há uma menor taxa de folatos intratissulares, nas mães de fetos acometidos por DFTN, porém com taxas de folatos séricos semelhantes em relação ao grupo controle.

Folato, vitamina B12 e ferritina sérica e defeitos do tubo neural

Objetivo: verificar os níveis de folatos, vitamina B12 e ferritina em pacientes cujos fetos apresentaram defeitos de tubo neural (DTN). O folato sangüíneo e a vitamina B12 atuam como cofatores para as enzimas envolvidas na biossíntese do DNA. A interrupção deste processo pode impedir o fechamento do tubo neural. A suplementação vitamínica contendo folato pode reduzir as taxas de ocorrência de defeitos de tubo neural, embora exista a preocupação de que esta prevenção possa mascarar a deficiência de vitamina B12. Métodos: dosagens de vitamina B12 e ferritina pelo método de enzimaimunoensaio com micropartículas e a dosagens de ácido fólico pelo método de captura iônica (IMx ABBOTT). Resultados: a porcentagem de gestantes com deficiência de vitamina B12 (níveis séricos < 150 pg/ml) foi de 11,8%. Não houve nenhum caso de deficiência de folato (níveis séricos < 3,0 ng/ml). A prevalência de gestantes com deficiência nos estoques de ferro foi de 47,1% (níveis séricos < 12 ng/ml). Conclusões: com os resultados encontrados neste estudo (prevalência de 11,8% de deficientes em vitamina B12 e 0% de deficiência de folato), sugerimos que a suplementação se realize após a determinação da vitamina B12 sérica.

The challenges and success factors of commercializing cleaner technologies

Cleaner technologies include products, services, technologies, processes and systems that in use create less environmental hazard than the existing alternatives. Rapidly growing cleantech sector possesses an essential competitive advantage in the future. However, no profound research has been conducted on the characteristics of cleaner technologies and their effect on the commercialization process. This thesis aims at synthesizing scattered information and creating a basis for accelerating cleaner technology commercialization in Finnish context. Two research questions are defined: 1. What are the key challenges and success factors in the commercialization of cleaner technologies based on the existing literature? 2. What kind of lessons can be learned from the Finnish success stories of cleantech commercialization? The research was conducted as a literature review and supported with three case interviews. The results suggest that literature-based challenges are mostly related to, for example, difficulty in gathering customer information, unrealistic customer expectations, lack of resources, networks and proper success indicators, legislation, and unstructured strategy planning stemming from company culture. Handling the barriers require, above all, open communication from all stakeholders, management commitment and accurate goal setting, government-driven funding and incentives, and cooperation with educational facilities. Finnish success cases emphasize especially customer attention: listening to customers and receiving feedback from them during the whole commercialization process to correct the errors early and save resources, visionary in fulfilling customer needs, ability to question company’s own business performance, not being afraid of making mistakes but learning from them, and continuously observing and evaluating the commercialization process.