Know thy neighbour: A normative theory of synaptic depression

Synapses exhibit an extraordinary degree of short-term malleability, with release probabilities and effective synaptic strengths changing markedly over multiple timescales. From the perspective of a fixed computational operation in a network, this seems like a most unacceptable degree of added variability. We suggest an alternative theory according to which short-term synaptic plasticity plays a normatively-justifiable role. This theory starts from the commonplace observation that the spiking of a neuron is an incomplete, digital, report of the analog quantity that contains all the critical information, namely its membrane potential. We suggest that a synapse solves the inverse problem of estimating the pre-synaptic membrane potential from the spikes it receives, acting as a recursive filter. We show that the dynamics of short-term synaptic depression closely resemble those required for optimal filtering, and that they indeed support high quality estimation. Under this account, the local postsynaptic potential and the level of synaptic resources track the (scaled) mean and variance of the estimated presynaptic membrane potential. We make experimentally testable predictions for how the statistics of subthreshold membrane potential fluctuations and the form of spiking non-linearity should be related to the properties of short-term plasticity in any particular cell type.

3-7岁儿童对情景化习俗道义情境中社会行为的认知发展

Children’s understanding of deontic rules and theory of mind (ToM) were the two research domains for children’s social cognition. It was significant for understanding children’s social cognition to combine the researches in the two domains. Children at 3, 5 and 7years were required to answer three questions according to the stories which happened in children’s familiar context. The three questions were designed to address the three problems:⑴Development of 3-7-Year-old children’s understanding about how the deontic rules were enacted or changed.⑵ Development of 3-7-Year-old children’s understanding about that the deontic rules and the actor’s mental states could impact on his behaviors.⑶ Development of 3-7-Year-old children’s capacity to integrate the deontic rules and mental state to evaluate the actor’s behavior. The results showed that: ① The 3-7-Year-old children had known that deontic rules were established by the authority’s speech act. But there were still some irrelevant factors which influenced the children’s judgments, such as the authority’s desire. ② The children gradually recognized the relationship between actors should do something and they will do the same thing. 3-year-old children could recognize such relationship in a way, but their predictions were usually influenced by some irrelevant factors. The children at 5 and 7 years old understood this relationship more steady. ③ In deontic context, more and more children predicted the actors’ behaviors according to the actors’ mental states as they grown up. The ratio that the 3-7-Year-old children predicted the actors’ behavior according to their false belief about the deontic rules was smaller in deontic context compared with the children’s performance in traditional false belief task. This maybe indicated that the deontic context influenced the children’s inference stronger than the physical context. ④ When they could get the actors’ desires and the deontic rules, all the children could predict the actors’ behaviors according to their desires, but not the deontic rules. It meant that all the children could understand that the actors’ desire mediated between the deontic rules and their behaviors. But when the actors wanted to transgress the deontic rules, all the children’s predications became less accurate. ⑤ When they assigned criticism, more and more children could discriminate different behaviors as a result of diverse mental states although they all transgressed the deontic rules. But the most part of children overweighed the deontic rules but overlooked the actors’ mental state about the deontic rules; their criticism to behaviors which transgressed the deontic rules just differ in quantity according to diverse mental states, that is: if the actors known the rules or want to transgress the rules, then punished more, and if the actors didn’t know the rules or transgress the rules accidentally, then punished a little.

Timber grading seminar - Some things you should know about how strength grading works and what is changing in the standards.

Presentations from the seminar on timber grading. "This grading seminar will give you a crash course in timber strength grading, what it is, how it works, and how it is changing. It aims to demystify timber grading, tackle some widely held misconceptions, and tell you the things you need to be aware of to improve profitability, and remain correct and safe in what you do. The timber resource in the UK is changing, technology is advancing, and standards are being modified. This seminar will bring you the latest position, informed by CEN and BSI standards committee work and research conducted by the SIRT network."

What we need to know before speaking on Climate Change and Global Warming

Workshop on Energy Greenhouse Gases & Environment, Porto, 2008

To Know What Counts

sermon text; MS Word document

Selecting renal replacement therapies: what do African American and non-African American patients and their families think others should know? A mixed methods study.

BACKGROUND: Little is known regarding the types of information African American and non-African American patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) and their families need to inform renal replacement therapy (RRT) decisions. METHODS: In 20 structured group interviews, we elicited views of African American and non-African American patients with CKD and their families about factors that should be addressed in educational materials informing patients' RRT selection decisions. We asked participants to select factors from a list and obtained their open-ended feedback. RESULTS: Ten groups of patients (5 African American, 5 non-African American; total 68 individuals) and ten groups of family members (5 African American, 5 non-African American; total 62 individuals) participated. Patients and families had a range (none to extensive) of experiences with various RRTs. Patients identified morbidity or mortality, autonomy, treatment delivery, and symptoms as important factors to address. Family members identified similar factors but also cited the effects of RRT decisions on patients' psychological well-being and finances. Views of African American and non-African American participants were largely similar. CONCLUSIONS: Educational resources addressing the influence of RRT selection on patients' morbidity and mortality, autonomy, treatment delivery, and symptoms could help patients and their families select RRT options closely aligned with their values. Including information about the influence of RRT selection on patients' personal relationships and finances could enhance resources' cultural relevance for African Americans.

Knowledge and judgments about events that occurred prior to birth: The measurement of the persistence of information

Data from five laboratories using five different techniques were reanalyzed to measure subjects' knowledge of events that occurred over the past 70 years. Subjects were about 20 years of age, so the measures included events that extended up to 50 years before birth. The functions relating knowledge about the events to age do not decrease precipitously at birth but gradually drop to above-chance levels. Techniques usually used to study retention within the individual can be used to study the persistence of ideas and fashions within an age cohort in a culture.

The bigger the better? or what we know and what we still need to learn about anthracycline dose per course, dose density and cumulative dose in the treatment of breast cancer.

Clinical Trial

What a User should Know when Selecting an Evacuation Model

In recent years, evacuation models have been increasingly applied in an attempt to understand the outcome of emergency egress scenarios.