Automated verification of shape, size and bag properties.

In recent years, separation logic has emerged as a contender for formal reasoning of heap-manipulating imperative programs. Recent works have focused on specialised provers that are mostly based on fixed sets of predicates. To improve expressivity, we have proposed a prover that can automatically handle user-defined predicates. These shape predicates allow programmers to describe a wide range of data structures with their associated size properties. In the current work, we shall enhance this prover by providing support for a new type of constraints, namely bag (multi-set) constraints. With this extension, we can capture the reachable nodes (or values) inside a heap predicate as a bag constraint. Consequently, we are able to prove properties about the actual values stored inside a data structure

Development and validation of a new instrument to measure perceived risks associated with the use of tobacco and nicotine-containing products

Making tobacco products associated with lower risks available to smokers who would otherwise continue smoking is recognized as an important strategy towards addressing smoking-related harm. Predicting use behavior is an important major component of product risk assessment. In this context, risk perception is a possible factor driving tobacco product uptake and use. As prior to market launch real-world actual product use cannot be observed, assessing risk perception can provide predictive information. Considering the lack of suitable validated self-report instruments, the development of a new instrument was undertaken to quantify perceived risks of tobacco and nicotine-containing products by adult smokers, former smokers and never-smokers. Initial items were constructed based on a literature review, focus groups and expert opinion. Data for scale formation and assessment were obtained through two successive US-based web surveys (n=2020 and 1640 completers, respectively). Psychometric evaluation was based on Rasch Measurement Theory and Classical Test Theory. Psychometric evaluation supported the formation of an 18-item Perceived Health Risk scale and a 7-item Perceived Addiction Risk scale: item response option thresholds were ordered correctly for all items; item locations in each scale were spread out (coverage range 75-87%); scale reliability was supported by high person separation indices > 0.93, Cronbach's alpha > 0.98 and Corrected Item-Total Correlations > 0.88; and no differential item functioning was present. Construct validity evaluations met expectations through inter-scale correlations and findings from known-group comparisons. The Perceived Risk Instrument is a psychometrically robust instrument applicable for general and personal risk perception measurement, for use in different types of products (including cigarettes, nicotine replacement therapy, potential Modified Risk Tobacco Products), and for different status groups (i.e., current smokers with and without intention to quit, former smokers, never smokers)

Cognitive Function in Early Adulthood Among Ethnically Diverse Groups

My research fills in gaps in previous studies done about cognitive decline and onset of cognitive changes in early adulthood. Cognitive decline has mainly been researched in older adults and no one has a clear answer of when cognitive changes begin. This study will examine cognitive ability in early adulthood amongst ethnically diverse groups. A survey will be administered online to participants and they will be asked about their age, ethnic reference groups, amount of languages they speak and other demographic questions. Memory and decision making will be the cognitive abilities tested. Previous findings suggest that there is not a real difference between memory or decision making among individuals. However factors such as education and language had an impact on cognitive ability. In this study I expect to find no difference in memory among early adulthood but maybe changes relating to decision making. Studying changes in cognitive ability in early adulthood can contribute to studies about the onset of cognitive decline in older adults. Additionally, it can support research done that culture can influence someone's development

Mapping the Semantic Space for the Subjective Experience of Emotional Responses to Odors

Two studies were conducted to examine the nature of the verbal labels that describe emotional effects elicited by odors. In Study 1, a list of terms selected for their relevance to describe affective feelings induced by odors was assessed while participants were exposed to a set of odorant samples. The data were submitted to a series of exploratory factor analyses to 1) reduce the set of variables to a smaller set of summary scales and 2) get a preliminary sense of the differentiation of affective feelings elicited by odors. The goal of Study 2 was to replicate the findings of Study 1 with a larger sample of odorant samples and participants and to validate the preliminary model obtained in Study 1 by using confirmatory factor analysis. Overall, the findings point to a structure of affective responses to odors that differs from the classical taxonomies of emotion such as posited by discrete or bidimensional emotion theories. These findings suggest that the subjective affective experiences or feelings induced by odors are structured around a small group of dimensions that reflect the role of olfaction in well-being, social interaction, danger prevention, arousal or relaxation sensations, and conscious recollection of emotional memorie

Emotional Processing of Odors: Evidence for a Nonlinear Relation between Pleasantness and Familiarity Evaluations

Pleasantness, familiarity, and intensity are 3 interdependent dimensions commonly used to describe the perceived qualities of an odor. In particular, many empirical studies have demonstrated a positive correlation between familiarity and pleasantness. However, on the basis of both theoretical and methodological perspectives, we questioned the validity of such a relation for malodors. We report 2 studies based on subjective judgments of a large sample of odorants (Experiment 1) associated with autonomic recordings (Experiment 2). Multivariate exploratory analysis performed on the data splits the whole odorant set into 2 subsets composed, respectively, of unpleasant and pleasant odorants. Subsequent correlation analyses have shown that the relation between pleasantness and familiarity is specific for the pleasant odors in the 2 experiments. Moreover, autonomic activity was more important in response to malodors than to pleasant odors and was significantly correlated with unpleasantness ratings in the subset of unpleasant odors. These 2 studies argue in favor of a functional dissociation in the relations between both subjective and autonomic responses to odors as a function of pleasantness and indicate that researchers in the olfactory domain should consider the relations between pleasantness and familiarity as more complex than linea

Sensory profile of portuguese white wines using long-term memory: a novel nationwide approach

White wine sensory profiling of all 12 Protected Geographical Indications (PGIs) of mainland Portugal was achieved through completion of extended sensory questionnaires by 20 professional wine experts. No samples were assessed; the experiment was based on memory alone. Three macro-zonings were found and typicality differences were statistically validated and sensory described. PGI MINHO was found the most typical of all PGIs, with several extreme rates on Color, Aroma and Taste. SOUTHERN cluster of the four meridional PGIs presented several extreme, therefore typical, sensory assessments, mostly opposite to the profile of PGI Minho. Color tonality, alcohol and acidity were mutually related and respective variations were correlated with published findings and expressed as key factors for regional macro-zoning differentiation. Moreover, with the proposed methodology it was possible to achieve a novel nationwide sensory characterization of PGIs, overcoming ongoing macroscaling and sample representativeness limitations and envisaging new nation-sized sensory studiesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Emotional ratings and skin conductance response to visual, auditory and haptic stimuli

The human emotional reactions to stimuli delivered by different sensory modalities is a topic of interest for many disciplines, from Human-Computer-Interaction to cognitive sciences. Different databases of stimuli eliciting emotional reaction are available, tested on a high number of participants. Interestingly, stimuli within one database are always of the same type. In other words, to date, no data was obtained and compared from distinct types of emotion-eliciting stimuli from the same participant. This makes it difficult to use different databases within the same experiment, limiting the complexity of experiments investigating emotional reactions. Moreover, whereas the stimuli and the participants’ rating to the stimuli are available, physiological reactions of participants to the emotional stimuli are often recorded but not shared. Here, we test stimuli delivered either through a visual, auditory, or haptic modality in a within participant experimental design. We provide the results of our study in the form of a MATLAB structure including basic demographics on the participants, the participant’s self-assessment of his/her emotional state, and his/her physiological reactions (i.e., skin conductance)

Revisiting the relation between language and cognition:A Cross-cultural Study with odors

Nous avons étudié la relation entre la codabilité des odeurs et leur représentation en mémoire dans trois groupes culturels, français, américain et vietnamien. Dans une première expérience, nous avons demandé à des participants des trois cultures d’identifier par deux fois un ensemble de 40 odorants. A partir de cette tâche, nous avons calculé la codabilité de chacun des 40 odorants. Dans une deuxième expérience, nous avons demandé à un autre groupe de participants de chaque culture de réaliser une tâche de reconnaissance par oui/non sur le même ensemble d’odorants. Les résultats de l’expérience 1 suggèrent que la codabilité des odeurs (1) est une dimension pertinente car certaines odeurs sont plus codables que d’autres au sein d’une même culture, (2) peut être mesurée de manière équivalente par des indices d’accords intra et interpersonnels, et (3) varie entre les cultures en fonction de l’environnement olfactif et de la structure du langage. Les résultats de l’expérience 2 montrent que les scores de codabilité en France prédisent les performances de mémoire de reconnaissance dans les trois cultures mais que les scores aux Etats-Unis et au Vietnam n’en prédisent aucun des scores de reconnaissances.We investigated the relationship between odor codability and odor memory representation in three cultural groups: French, American, and Vietnamese. In a first experiment, we asked participants from the three cultures to identify twice a set of 40 common odorants. From this task, we computed the codability of each of the 40 odorants. In a second experiment, we asked another group of participants from each culture to perform a yes/no recognition task on the same set of odorants. Results from Experiment 1 suggest that odor codability (1) is a meaningful dimension because some odors are more codable than others within a culture, (2) is equivalently measurable by several inter- and intrapersonal agreement indices, and (3) varies between cultures as a function of both the olfactory environment and language structure. Results from Experiment 2 show that the French codability scores predict recognition memory performance in all three cultures but that the American and Vietnamese codability scores predict none of the recognition performances

Hedonic Judgments of Chemical Compounds Are Correlated with Molecular Size

Different psychophysical works have reported that, when a wide range of odors is assessed, the hedonic dimension is the most salient. Hence, pleasantness is the most basic attribute of odor perception. Recent studies suggest that the molecular size of a given odorant is positively correlated with its hedonic character. This correlation was confirmed in the present study, but further basic molecular features affecting pleasantness were identified by means of multiple linear regression for the compounds contained in five chemical sets. For three of them, hedonic judgments are available in the literature. For a further two chemical sets, hedonic scores were estimated from odor character descriptions based on numerical profiles. Generally speaking, fairly similar equations were obtained for the prediction of hedonic judgments in the five chemical sets, with R2 values ranging from 0.46 to 0.71. The results suggest that larger molecules containing oxygen are more likely to be perceived as pleasant, while the opposite applies to carboxylic acids and sulfur compounds