You made him be alive: Children’s perceptions of animacy in a humanoid robot

Social robots are becoming more sophisticated; in many cases they offer complex, autonomous interactions, responsive behaviors, and biomimetic appearances. These features may have significant impact on how people perceive and engage with robots; young children may be particularly influenced due to their developing ideas of agency. Young children are considered to hold naive beliefs of animacy and a tendency to mis-categorise moving objects as being alive but, with development, children can demonstrate a biological understanding of animacy. We experimentally explore the impact of children’s age and a humanoid’s movement on children’s perceptions of its animacy. Our humanoid’s behavior varied in apparent autonomy, from motionless, to manually operated, to covertly operated. Across conditions, younger children rated the robot as being significantly more person-like than older children did. We further found an interaction effect: younger children classified the robot as significantly more machine-like if they observed direct operation in contrast observing the motionless or apparently autonomous robot. Our findings replicate field results, supporting the modal model of the developmental trajectory for children’s understanding of animacy. We outline a program of research to both deepen the theoretical understanding of children’s animacy beliefs and develop robotic characters appropriate across key stages of child development

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

Forms of knowledge and eco-innovation modes: Evidence from Spanish manufacturing firms

The paper investigates the knowledge drivers of firms' eco-innovations (EI) by retaining the diverse nature of their target. Different internal and external knowledge sources are examined and the evidence of EI-modes is searched for with respect to a sample of Spanish manufacturing firms covering the 2007–2009 and 2010–2012 periods. An “attenuated” Science, Technology, EI-mode prevails internally, with R&D more pivotal than either embodied or disembodied non-R&D knowledge, depending on the EI strategy. Externally, synthetic knowledge matters more than the analytical one, suggesting instead a Doing, Using, Interacting EI-mode. Hence, a dichotomic combination of the two modes emerges across the firm's boundaries. However, remarkable differences are in place, depending on whether EIs target efficiency or non-efficiency related environmental improvements. Our evidence also shows that internal and external knowledge turn out difficult to combine, both within and across modes

A change in the optical polarization associated with a gamma-ray flare in the blazar 3C 279

It is widely accepted that strong and variable radiation detected over all accessible energy bands in a number of active galaxies arises from a relativistic, Doppler-boosted jet pointing close to our line of sight. The size of the emitting zone and the location of this region relative to the central supermassive black hole are, however, poorly known, with estimates ranging from light-hours to a light-year or more. Here we report the coincidence of a gamma-ray flare with a dramatic change of optical polarization angle. This provides evidence for co-spatiality of optical and gamma-ray emission regions and indicates a highly ordered jet magnetic field. The results also require a non-axisymmetric structure of the emission zone, implying a curved trajectory for the emitting material within the jet, with the dissipation region located at a considerable distance from the black hole, at about 10^5 gravitational radii.Comment: Published in Nature issued on 18 February 2010. Corresponding authors: Masaaki Hayashida and Greg Madejsk

Bacteria clustering by polymers induces the expression of quorum sense controlled phenotypes

Bacteria deploy a range of chemistries to regulate their behaviour and respond to their environment. Quorum sensing is one mean by which bacteria use chemical reactions to modulate pre-infection behaviour such as surface attachment. Polymers that can interfere with bacterial adhesion or the chemical reactions used for quorum sensing are thus a potential means to control bacterial population responses. Here we report how polymeric "bacteria sequestrants", designed to bind to bacteria through electrostatic interactions and thus inhibit bacterial adhesion to surfaces, induce the expression of quorum sensing controlled phenotypes as a consequence of cell clustering. A combination of polymer and analytical chemistry, biological assays and computational modelling has been used to characterise the feedback between bacteria clustering and quorum sensing signaling. We have also derived design principles and chemical strategies for controlling bacterial behaviour at the population leve

Ethical frameworks should be applied to computational modelling of infectious disease interventions

This perspective is part of an international effort to improve epidemiological models with the goal of reducing the unintended consequences of infectious disease interventions. The scenarios in which models are applied often involve difficult trade-offs that are well recognised in public health ethics. Unless these trade-offs are explicitly accounted for, models risk overlooking contested ethical choices and values, leading to an increased risk of unintended consequences. We argue that such risks could be reduced if modellers were more aware of ethical frameworks and had the capacity to explicitly account for the relevant values in their models. We propose that public health ethics can provide a conceptual foundation for developing this capacity. After reviewing relevant concepts in public health and clinical ethics, we discuss examples from the COVID-19 pandemic to illustrate the current separation between public health ethics and infectious disease modelling. We conclude by describing practical steps to build the capacity for ethically aware modelling. Developing this capacity constitutes a critical step towards ethical practice in computational modelling of public health interventions, which will require collaboration with experts on public health ethics, decision support, behavioural interventions, and social determinants of health, as well as direct consultation with communities and policy makers

Operation and performance of the ATLAS Tile Calorimeter in Run 1

The Tile Calorimeter is the hadron calorimeter covering the central region of the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Approximately 10,000 photomultipliers collect light from scintillating tiles acting as the active material sandwiched between slabs of steel absorber. This paper gives an overview of the calorimeter’s performance during the years 2008–2012 using cosmic-ray muon events and proton–proton collision data at centre-of-mass energies of 7 and 8TeV with a total integrated luminosity of nearly 30 fb−1. The signal reconstruction methods, calibration systems as well as the detector operation status are presented. The energy and time calibration methods performed excellently, resulting in good stability of the calorimeter response under varying conditions during the LHC Run 1. Finally, the Tile Calorimeter response to isolated muons and hadrons as well as to jets from proton–proton collisions is presented. The results demonstrate excellent performance in accord with specifications mentioned in the Technical Design Report

Search for High-Mass Resonances Decaying to τν in pp Collisions at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS Detector

A search for high-mass resonances decaying to τν using proton-proton collisions at √s=13 TeV produced by the Large Hadron Collider is presented. Only τ-lepton decays with hadrons in the final state are considered. The data were recorded with the ATLAS detector and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 36.1 fb−1. No statistically significant excess above the standard model expectation is observed; model-independent upper limits are set on the visible τν production cross section. Heavy W′ bosons with masses less than 3.7 TeV in the sequential standard model and masses less than 2.2–3.8 TeV depending on the coupling in the nonuniversal G(221) model are excluded at the 95% credibility level

Performance of missing transverse momentum reconstruction with the ATLAS detector using proton–proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

The performance of the missing transverse momentum (EmissT) reconstruction with the ATLAS detector is evaluated using data collected in proton–proton collisions at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV in 2015. To reconstruct EmissT, fully calibrated electrons, muons, photons, hadronically decaying τ -leptons, and jets reconstructed from calorimeter energy deposits and charged-particle tracks are used. These are combined with the soft hadronic activity measured by reconstructed charged-particle tracks not associated with the hard objects. Possible double counting of contributions from reconstructed charged-particle tracks from the inner detector, energy deposits in the calorimeter, and reconstructed muons from the muon spectrometer is avoided by applying a signal ambiguity resolution procedure which rejects already used signals when combining the various EmissT contributions. The individual terms as well as the overall reconstructed EmissT are evaluated with various performance metrics for scale (linearity), resolution, and sensitivity to the data-taking conditions. The method developed to determine the systematic uncertainties of the EmissT scale and resolution is discussed. Results are shown based on the full 2015 data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 3.2 fb−1

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta