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Newsletter

Positive Technology Journals

« 2011-06 | HomePage | 2011-09 »

Jul 27, 2011

A robot that flies like a bird

The poetry of technology..

00:07 Posted in AI & robotics, Blue sky | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jul 22, 2011

Mirroring avatars: dissociation of action and intention in human motor resonance

Paola Borroni, Alessandra Gorini, Giuseppe Riva, Stephane Bouchard and Gabriella Cerri

The European journal of neuroscience (19 July 2011)
 
Abstract. Observation of others’ actions induces a subliminal activation of motor pathways (motor resonance) that is mediated by the mirror neuron system and reflects the motor program encoding the observed action. Whether motor resonance represents the movements composing an action or also its motor intention remains of debate, as natural actions implicitly contain their motor intentions. Here, action and intention are dissociated using a natural and an impossible action with the same grasping intention: subjects observe an avatar grasping a ball using either a natural hand action (‘palmar’ finger flexion) or an impossible hand action (‘dorsal’ finger flexion). Motor-evoked potentials (MEPs), elicited by single transcranial magnetic stimulation of the hand area in the primary motor cortex, were used to measure the excitability modulation of motor pathways during observation of the two different hand actions. MEPs were recorded from the opponens pollicis (OP), abductor digiti minimi (ADM) and extensor carpi radialis (ECR) muscles. A significant MEP facilitation was found in the OP, during observation of the grasping phase of the natural action; MEPs in the ADM were facilitated during observation of the hand opening phase of the natural action and of both opening and grasping phases of the impossible action. MEPs in the ECR were not affected. As different resonant responses are elicited by the observation of the two different actions, despite their identical intention, we conclude that the mirror neuron system cannot utilize the observer’s subliminal motor program in the primary motor cortex to encode action intentions.

17:53 Posted in Telepresence & virtual presence, Virtual worlds | Permalink | Comments (0)

4th International Workshop on "From Event-Driven Business Process Management to Ubiquitous Complex Event Processing"

The Workshop

4th International Workshop on “Event-Driven Business Process Management” is co-located with ServiceWave/Future Internet Conference 2011:Poznan, Poland from October 25-28, 2011.

This workshop focuses on the topics of connecting Internet of Services and Things with the management of business processes and the Future and Emerging Technologies as addressed by the ISTAG Recommendations of the European FET-F 2020 and Beyond Initiative. Such FET challenges are not longer limited to business processes, but focus on new ideas in order to connect processes on the basis of CEP with disciplines of Cell Biology, Epigenetics, Brain Research, Robotics, Emergency Management, SocioGeonomics, Bio- and Quantum Computing – summarized under the concept of U-CEP.

Important Dates

Deadline paper or extended abstract submissions: 2 September 2011
Notification of acceptance: 26 September 2011
Workshop: 28 October 2011
Camera-ready papers: 15 December 2011

More information here


15:26 Posted in ICT and complexity | Permalink | Comments (0)