Internal Model

KIVIEW is an object-oriented browsing interface to databases. The underlying internal model is a semantic network, defined via a collection of triplet facts which are governed by a small set of integrity requirements. KIVIEW's only ezternal structure is a display, called ...

We have recently proposed an extension to Petri nets in order to be able to directly deal with all aspects of embedded digital systems. This extension is meant to be used as an internal model of our co-design environment. After analyzing relevant related work, and presenting a short introduction to our extension as a background material we describe the details

Survivors of spinal cord injury need to reorganize their residual body movements for interacting with assistive devices and performing activities that used to be easy and natural. To investigate movement reorganization, we asked subjects with high-level spinal cord injury (SCI) and unimpaired subjects to control a cursor on a screen by performing upper-body motions. While this task would be normally accomplished by operating a computer mouse, here shoulder motions were mapped into the cursor position. Both the control and the SCI subjects were rapidly able to reorganize their movements and to successfully control the cursor. The majority of the subjects in both groups were successful in reducing the movements that were not effective at producing cursor motions. This is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the control system is merely concerned with the accurate acquisition of the targets and is unconcerned with motions that are not relevant to this goal. In contrast, our findings suggest that subjects can learn to reorganize coordination so as to increase the correspondence between the subspace of their upper-body motions with the plane in which the controlled cursor moves. This is effectively equivalent to constructing an inverse internal model of the map from body motions to cursor motions, established by the experiment. These results are relevant to the development of interfaces for assistive devices that optimize the use of residual voluntary control and enhance the learning process in disabled users, searching for an easily learnable map between their body motor space and control space of the device.

Recent psychophysical studies on normal subjects, as well as brain imaging studies, have revised the concepts concerning the mechanisms underlying spatial orientation during navigation tasks. The emphasis has been put on internal models that allow the prediction of a planned trajectory and are essential in the steering of locomotion. Cognitive factors such as strategies and emotional parameters are now starting to be included in the research on spatial orientation. It is obvious that important individual and gender differences exist in the brain operations underlying spatial orientation in humans, which may help to understand the construction of a coherent perception and the organic neural disorders related to the internal representation of space.

The paper investigates the design of Adaptive Feedforward Cancellation (AFC) algorithms with sinusoidal regressors for repetitive control. Such adaptive algorithms are equivalent to linear controllers based on the Internal Model Principle (IMP). Using this equivalence and root locus rules, the phase advance of the regressor of the adaptive algorithm can be chosen to maximize the phase margin at low gains. A surprising result is that selecting the optimal phase advance is equivalent to placing a zero in the open right half-plane in certain cases.

A b s t r a c t S t r u c t u r a l a s p e c t s are s t u d i e d o f n o n l i n e a r c o n t r o l systems in a s e t t i n g o f d i f f e r e n t i a b l e m a n i f o l d s . As a g e n e r a l i z a t i o n o f t h e s e t u p commonly u s e d i n l i n e a r mult i v a r i a b l e c o n t r o l , t h e r e g u l a t o r p r o b l e m i s d e f i n e d a s t h a t o f c o n t r o l l i n g a f i x e d p l a n t t o t r a c k ( o r r e j e c t ) r e f e r e n c e ( o r disturbance) signals generated by a f i x e d dynamic model c a l l e d t h e e x o s y s t e m . I t i s shown t h a t , i f t h e c o n t r o l l e r i s e r r o r -d r i v e n , i f p e r f e c t t r a c k i n g i s a c h i e v e d i n t h e limit t + m , and i f a s u i t a b l e o b s e rv a b i l i t y c o n d i t i o n i s p r e s e n t , t h e n t h e c o n t r o l l e r n e c e s s a r i l y i n c o r p o r a t e s a copy ( i n t e r n a l model) of the e x o s y s t e m d y n a m i c s . T h i s r e s u l t r e p r e s e n t s a c o u n t e rp a r t i n t h e n o n l i n e a r d i f f e r e n t i a b l e s e t t i n g t o v a r i o u s r e s u l t s a l r e a d y known f o r l i n e a r s y s t e m s a n d f o r a bs t r a c t a u t o m a t a . 1. I n t r o d u c t i o n This paper i s c o n c e r n e d w i t h c e r t a i n s t r u c t u r a l a s p e c t s o f n o n l i n e a r c o n t r o l s y s t e m s , i n t h e s e t t i n g of smooth (C") d i f f e r e n t i a b l e m a n i f o l d s . Our goal i s t o d e m o n s t r a t e t h a t , u n d e r v a r i o u s o b s e r v a b i l i t y assumpt i o n s , a r e g u l a t o r o r t r a c k i n g s y s t e m o f c l o s e d -l o o p ( ' e r r o r -f e e d b a c k ' ) t y p e m u s t i n c o r p o r a t e i n t h e f e e dback loop a model o f t h e ( o b s e r v a b l e ) d y n a m i c s t r u c t u r e o f t h e d i s t u r b a n c e a n d / o r r e f e r e n c e s i g n a l s w h i c h t h e system i s d e s i g n e d t o r e j e c t o r t r a c k . T h e s e r e s u l t s p r o v i d e a d d i t i o n a l i n s t a n c e s o f what has been termed t h e I n t e r n a l Model P r i n c i p l e o f r e g u l a t i o n t h e o r y [ F r a n c i s & Wonham, 1976; Wonham, 1976; Wonham, 1979; Hepburn E Wonham, 19811. 2 . The Endomorph I n t h e s e t u p e m p l o y e d i n t h e work j u s t c i t e d , t h e d i s t u r b a n c e a n d / o r r e f e r e n c e s i g n a l s a r e a s s u m e d t o b e generated by a ( p o s s i b l y f i c t i t i o u s ) dynamic model ( e x o s y s t e m ) w h i c h r e p r e s e n t s t h e ' o u t s i d e w o r l d ' a s seen by the 'inside world' [endosystem) of controller and p l a n t . The coupling of exosystem to endosystem ( v i a t h e t r a c k i n g e r r o r s i g n a l , i n t h e c a s e o f a t r a c ki n g p r o c e s s , o r b y d i s t u r b a n c e i n j e c t i o n , i n t h e c a s e o f r e g u l a t i o n ) i n d u c e s a s u b f l o w i n t h e c o m p o s i t e s t a t e s p a c e o f t h e exosystem-controller-plant t a k e n t o g e t h e r . This subflow will h e r e b e c a l l e d t h e e n d o m o r p h . I n t h e r e g u l a t i o n t h e o r y o f l i n e a r t i m e -i n v a r i a n t s y s t e m s [ e . g . Wonham, 19791, the endomorph c a n b e i d e n t i f i e d w i t h t h e g e n e r a l i z e d e i g e n s p a c e i n t h e c o m p o s i t e s t a t e s p a c e , c o r r e s p o n d i n g t o t h e ( u n s t a b l e ) e i g e n v a l u e s o f the exosystem. Inasmuch as t h e endomorph is, i n t h a t c a s e , a g l o b a l a t t r a c t o r f o r and i n v a r i a n t s u b s p a c e o f t h e f l o w , t h e r e g u l a t i o n c o n d i t i o n w h i c h t h e s y s t e m must s a t i s f y i s j u s t t h a t t h e endomorph b e c o n t a i n e d i n * T h i s r e s e a r c h was p a r t i a l l y s u p p o r t e d by t h e K a t u r a l Sciences and Engineering Re5earch Council, Canada, Grant No. A-7399. 1 A4 t h e k e r n e l o f t h e ( l i n e a r ) o u t p u t map t h a t d e f i n e s t h e r e g u l a t e d v a r i a b l e , i . e . t r a c k i n g e r r o r o r deviation from s e t p o i n t . T h i s means p r e c i s e l y t h a t t h e e r r o r c o n v e r g e s t o z e r o a s t i m e t-, f o r any i n i t i a l c o n d i t i o n i n t h e c o m p o s i t e s t a t e s p a c e . I n t h e n o n l i n e a r (Cm) s e t t i n g t h e f o r e g o i n g q u a l it a t i v e p i c t u r e c a n b e p r e s e r v e d i n many o f i t s e s s e n t i a l f e a t u r e s . The endomorph, which now becomes t h e ' u n s t a b l ec ? n t e r m a n i f o l d ' , h a s b e e n i n v e s t i g a t e d i n d e t a i l b y Hepburn E Wonham [1981; 19821, so d i s c u s s i o n h e r e will b e c o n f i n e d t o a b r i e f summary o f r e s u l t s . a d e s i r e d r e l a t i o n b e t w e e n t h e s t a t e s o f t h e e x o s y s t e m and p l a n t , which may be embodied i n a "good" submanifold w K c X x X P e l e a d i n g us t o i n t r o d u c e a submanifold K c X with K = X x ? The t a s k of t h e c o n t r o l l e r i s t o s t e e r t h e p l a n t s t a t e i n t o K, which, i n t h e l i n e a r c a s e , c o r r e s p o n d s t o r ed u c i n g t h e t r a c k i n g e r r o r a s y m p t o t i c a l l y t o z e r o . Under c e r t a i n c o n d i t i o n s ( g i v e ? i n t h e r e f e r e n c e s above), the endomorph, denoted by X , i s t h e image o f a unique (-invariant embedding v : xe +. x o f t h e e x o s y s t e m i n t o t h e c o m p o s i t e s y s t e m . P r e c i s e l y , 717

Different types of conflict have different effects on the financial system. Country priorities for reconstruction therefore vary accordingly. Nevertheless, the following problems repeatedly occur in reconstruction. First, central banks often remain weak and under-resourced. The ...

Specification tests using stochastic bottleneck models of airport congestion investigate whether dominant airlines internalize or ignore self-imposed delays at twenty-seven major US airports. Data on flight times determine the airport's landing and takeoff delays for every minute of operation during peak travel days. Dynamic congestion functions based on stochastic-queuing theory separately identify delays that aircraft experience directly, impose internally on their airline's other aircraft, or impose externally on other airlines. Specification tests largely reject internalization and fail to reject non-internalization by dominant airlines. Optimal pricing should value all time using non-dominant aircraft time values and treat all delays as external.

Children's misbehaviors and parental discipline strategies were investigated in families with abusive and nonabusive parents. Participants were 20 abusive families with children between the ages of 4 and 10. A matched control group of 20 families also participated. Parents were trained to report children's misbehaviors, parental disciplinary and affective reactions, and children's responses to discipline for 5 consecutive days. Abused children committed more transgressions of an aggressive nature and were more likely to oppose parental interventions than control children. Abusive parents used punitive disciplinary practices more frequently than control parents, who made more frequent use of reasoning techniques and simple commands. Abusive parents more often reported being angry and disgusted after disciplinary interventions. Finally, sequential analyses indicated that the type of discipline used by control parents depended on the type of child misbehavior. For abusive parents, punishment was the predominant type of discipline regardless of the types of child misbehavior. The findings were discussed in terms of coercion models of family interaction and in terms of internalization models of socialization.

A generalized minimum variance control law is derived for the control of nonlinear, possibly time-varying, multi-variable systems. The solution for the tracking and feedback/feedforward control law was obtained in the time-domain using a nonlinear operator representation of the process. The cost index involves both error and control signal costing terms and is normally quadratic but may also involve nonlinear functions. The feedback controller obtained is simple to implement and includes an internal model of the process. The tracking controller can include future reference change information, providing a predictive control capability. In one form the compensator might be considered a nonlinear version of the Smith Predictor that has feedforward action.

In mid 2004, after a lengthy period of industry consultation, the Basel Committee finally released its definitive rules on capital charges for Operational Risk under Basel II. In its proposals for allowing banks to calculate regulatory capital using their own internal models, the Basel Committee specified very stringent 'quantitative standards' for modelling operational risk. This has led to much discussion in the industry as to the types of statistical tools that could be used to calculate operational risk capital, under the so-called Loss Distribution Approach (LDA). Advanced techniques, such as Extreme Value Theory (EVT), have been proposed to satisfy the new regulatory requirements.

While attachment research has demonstrated that parents’ internal working models of attachment relationships tend to be transmitted to their children, affecting children’s developmental trajectories, this study specifically examines associations between adult attachment status and observable parent, child, and dyadic behaviors among children with autism and associated neurodevelopmental disorders of relating and communicating. The Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) was employed to derive parental working models of attachment relationships. The Functional Emotional Assessment Scale (FEAS) was used to determine the quality of relational and functional behaviors in parents and their children. The sample included parents and their 4- to 16-year-old children with autism and associated neurodevelopmental disorders. Hypothesized relationships between AAI classifications and FEAS scores were supported. Significant correlations were found between AAI classification and FEAS scores, indicating that children with autism spectrum disorders whose parents demonstrated secure attachment representations were better able to initiate and respond in two-way pre-symbolic gestural communication; organize two-way social problem-solving communication; and engage in imaginative thinking, symbolic play, and verbal communication. These findings lend support to the relevance of the parent’s state of mind pertaining to attachment status to child and parent relational behavior in cases wherein the child has been diagnosed with autism or an associated neurodevelopmental disorder of relating and communicating. A model emerges from these findings of conceptualizing relationships between parental internal models of attachment relationships and parent-child relational and functional levels that may aid in differentiating interventions.

The vestibular system provides the brain with sensory signals about three-dimensional head rotations and translations. These signals are important for postural and oculomotor control, as well as for spatial and bodily perception and cognition, and they are subtended by pathways running from the vestibular nuclei to the thalamus, cerebellum and the "vestibular cortex."

This paper investigates the role of active dancers in attenuation of web tension disturbances in a web process line. A general structure of the active dancer is considered; governing equations for web spans upstream and downstream to the dancer roller are developed. A structural limitation that facilitates efficient design of the active dancer system for web tension disturbance attenuation is derived and discussed based on the developed model. An open-architecture experimental web platform is developed for conducting real-time control experiments using the active dancer system. The active dancer system model is experimentally identified using the standard system identification techniques available in literature. Three types of control designs were investigated for the active dancer system: a proportional-integral-derivative controller, an internal model based controller, and a linear quadratic optimal controller. Data collected from a series of experiments using the three control designs validate the usefulness of the active dancers in attenuating web tension disturbances in a web process line. A representative sample of the experimental data is presented and discussed.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine subject response to music conducting motions simulated on a computer screen. Forty musicians and forty non-musicians responded to a point of light moving around a computer screen simulating the tip of a conductor’s baton. Subjects were asked to press a button every time they perceived a beat portrayed in the motions. The timing of subject responses to four modes of motion was recorded and analyzed.
In order to produce sound from their musical instruments, musicians must undergo a process that involves developing a mental image of the upcoming sound, creating an action program, and performing the chain of physical events that will culminate in the production of the desired sound. Even though it may last a mere fraction of a second, this process of anticipation is an essential component of music making. Whereas solo musicians anticipate the music rather freely, ensemble musicians must meet an essential requirement for obtaining satisfying musical results: they must play together. Since they also need to anticipate the music, then they must anticipate together in order to play together. This coordination is accomplished by way of visual information provided by the conductor.
In the present study it was hypothesized that speed and direction of conducting motions from any given beat to the next play an important role in the observers’ ability to anticipate and synchronize their motor activity. The experimental design allowed the author to examine visual perception of simulated conducting motions showing distinct motion behaviors, in isolation from actual sound and other sensory cues.
Results of this investigation indicate that both musicians and non-musicians respond with a high degree of uniformity to a type of conducting motion which resembles the motion produced by gravitational forces—accelerating going down, decelerating going up, following a parabolic trajectory when moving to either side. On the other hand, a motion which is inversely proportional to the motion produced by gravity yielded mixed results: non-musicians responded more uniformly than did musicians, as the latter were divided according to two distinct interpretations of where the beats occurred within the simulated conducting patterns.

The classical, disembodied approach to music cognition conceptualizes action and perception as separate, peripheral processes. In contrast, embodied accounts of music cognition emphasize the central role of the close coupling of action and perception. It is a commonly established fact that perception spurs action tendencies. We present a theoretical framework that captures the ways in which the human motor system and its actions can reciprocally influence the perception of music. The cornerstone of this framework is the common coding theory, postulating a representational overlap in the brain between the planning, the execution, and the perception of movement. The integration of action and perception in so-called internal models is explained as a result of associative learning processes. Characteristic of internal models is that they allow intended or perceived sensory states to be transferred into corresponding motor commands (inverse modeling), and vice versa, to predict the sensory outcomes of planned actions (forward modeling). Embodied accounts typically refer to inverse modeling to explain action effects on music perception . We extend this account by pinpointing forward modeling as an alternative mechanism by which action can modulate perception. We provide an extensive overview of recent empirical evidence in support of this idea. Additionally, we demonstrate that motor dysfunctions can cause perceptual disabilities, supporting the main idea of the paper that the human motor system plays a functional role in auditory perception. The finding that music perception is shaped by the human motor system and its actions suggests that the musical mind is highly embodied. However, we advocate for a more radical approach to embodied (music) cognition in the sense that it needs to be considered as a dynamical process, in which aspects of action, perception, introspection, and social interaction are of crucial importance.

A basic premise of attachment theory is that internal models of attachment remain relatively stable across the life span. We examined stability and change in adult attachment representations over 8 months in a sample of young adults (N = 144; Mean age = 24.5 years). Attachment patterns were assessed by categorical and continuous ratings across three methods-self-report ratings, expert ratings based on semi-structured interviews, and reports of romantic partners-and showed moderate stability. Interview ratings tended to show higher stability than self-report ratings. Changes in attachment ratings (across methods) were not consistently related to life events that had occurred in the intervening 8 months. The relationship between reliability and stability was discussed, and where the "true" stability could be estimated independent of unreliability, it was found to be very high (r's ranging from .72 to .96). The results highlight the importance of using multiple indicators in assessing adult attachment and using continuous rather than categorical ratings in the assessment of stability,

The role of information which is incidentally or accidentally acquired has been neglected in the study of information-seeking behavior. The study reported in this article focused on "incidental information acquisition" as a key concept and investigated the information-seeking behavior of 202 older adults, aged 60 and over, from both metropolitan Melbourne and rural areas in the Australian state of Victoria. The approach to the study was ecological in the sense that a picture was built up of information seeking in the context of the lives of the people in the sample, both individually and collectively. A particular and unusual focus of the study was the role of telecommunications, especially the telephone, in information seeking. The implications for society's systems of information provision are discussed, together with ramifications of the finding that older people will be slower than other groups to accept computer-based sources of information for everyday life. Everyone has some set of habits or routines for keeping his internal model of the world up to date... . We have friends, relatives, work associates, and acquaintances to whom we talk regularly and with whom we exchange news and views. We have habits of reading and watching and listening to public vehicles of communication-newspapers, television, radio, magazines and books. These are not random, but patterned activities... . [IInformation is in part acquired because it is deliberately The author acknowledges the postgraduate scholarship awarded to her by the Telstra Australia Fund for Social and Policy Research, which provided generous funding for three years for the project. The author also acknowledges the assistance of Lorraine Lipson in the development of the diagrammatical model presented in this article.

This article begins with a broad historical overview detailing how school-based sexuality education has been taught from a specific kind of heterosexual perspective that has excluded lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified (LGBTQ) students as well as heterosexual students who do not fall along culturally dominant heterosexual lines. To illustrate such exclusionary sexuality education, we examine the discourses of exclusion in U.S.-based and international models of sexuality education. Then we turn to a continuum of sexuality education programs ranging from no sexuality education at all, abstinence-only, abstinence-based, to comprehensive, and anti-oppressive approaches. We conclude by offering ideas about the ideal characteristics or qualities needed for sexuality education to be inclusive of LGBTQ youth. This would not only stem the tide of the negative impact exclusionary sexuality education practices have had on these youth, but also such an educational experience-which would involve an inclusive interdisciplinary approach across the curriculum-would likely be beneficial in a variety of ways to all students.

Although the idea of action simulation is nowadays popular in cognitive science, neuroscience and robotics, many aspects of the simulative processes remain unclear from empirical, computational, and neural perspectives. In the first part of the article, we provide a critical review and assessment of action simulation theories advanced so far in the wider literature of embodied and motor cognition. We focus our analysis on twelve key questions, and discuss them in the context of human and (occasionally) primate studies. In the second part of the article, we describe an integrative neuro-computational account of action simulation, which links the neural substrate (as revealed in neuroimaging studies of action simulation) to the components of a computational architecture that includes internal modeling, action monitoring and inhibition mechanisms.

A theoretical overview and supporting data are presented about the control of the segmental component of speech production. Findings of "motor-equivalent" trading relations between the contributions of two constrictions to the same acoustic transfer function provide preliminary support for the idea that segmental control is based on acoustic or auditory-perceptual goals. The goals are determined partly by non-linear, quanta1 relations (called "saturation effects") between motor commands and articulatory movements and between articulation and sound. Since processing times would be too long to allow the use of auditory feedback for closed-loop error correction in achieving acoustic goals, the control mechanism must use a robust "internal model" of the relation between articulation and the sound output that is learned during speech acquisition. Studies of the speech of cochlear implant and bilateral acoustic neuroma patients provide evidence supporting two roles for auditory feedback in adults: maintenance of the internal model, and monitoring the acoustic environment to help assure intelligibility by guiding relatively rapid adjustments in "postural" parameters underlying average sound level, speaking rate and the amount of prosodically-based inflection of FO and SPL. 0 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.

This series of articles for rehabilitation in practice aims to cover a knowledge element of the rehabilitation medicine curriculum. Nevertheless they are intended to be of interest to a multidisciplinary audience. The competency addressed in this article is 'An understanding of the different international models for funding of health care services and casemix systems, as exemplified by those in the US, Australia and the UK.'

Ren et al. (J Neurophysiol 96:1464–1477, 2006) found that saccades to visual targets became less accurate when somatosensory information about hand location was added, suggesting that saccades rely mainly on vision. We conducted two kinematic experiments to examine whether or not reaching movements would also show such strong reliance on vision. In Experiment 1, subjects used their dominant right hand

Recognition and simulation of actions performable on rigidly-Jointed actors such as human bodies have been the subject of our research for some time. One part of an ongoing effort towards a total human movement simulator is to develop a system to perform the actions of American Sign Language (ASL). However, one of the "channels" of ASL communication, the face, presents problems which are not well handled by a rigid model. An integrated system for an internal representation and simulation of the face is presented, along with a proposed image analysis model. Results from an implementation of the internal model and simulation modules are presented, as well as comments on the future of computer controlled recognition of facial actions. We conclude with a discussion on extensions of the system, covering relations between flexlble masses and rigid (Jointed) ones. Applications of this theory into constrained actions, such as across rigid nonmovlng sheets of bone (forehead, eyes) are also discussed.

In this paper we present a new approach to freeway travel time prediction, based on recurrent neural networks. Travel time prediction requires a modeling approach that is capable of dealing with complex non-linear spatio-temporal relationships between flows, speeds and densities. Based on literature, feedforward neural networks are a class of mathematical models that are well suited to solve this problem. A drawback of the feed-forward approach is that size and composition of the input time-series are inherently design choices and thus fixed for all input. This may lead to unnecessary large models. Moreover, for different traffic conditions different sizes and compositions of input time-series may be required, a requirement that is not satisfied by any feed forward data-driven method.

Complex adaptive systems have historically been studied using simplifications that mandate deterministic interactions between agents or instead treat their interactions only with regard to their statistical expectation. This has led to an anticipation, even in the case of agents employing inductive reasoning in light of limited information, that such systems may have equilibria that can be predicted a priori. This hypothesis is tested here using a simulation of a simple market economy in which each agent's behavior is based on the result of an iterative evolutionary process of variation and selection applied to competing internal models of its environment. The results indicate no tendency for convergence to stability or a longterm equilibrium and highlight fundamental differences between deterministic and stochastic models of complex adaptive systems.

To meet the Basel II regulatory requirements for the Advanced Measurement Approaches, the bank's internal model must include the use of internal data, relevant external data, scenario analysis and factors reflecting the business environment and internal control systems. Quantification of operational risk cannot be based only on historical data but should involve scenario analysis. Historical internal operational risk loss data have limited ability to predict future behaviour moreover, banks do not have enough internal data to estimate low frequency high impact events adequately. Historical external data are difficult to use due to different volumes and other factors. In addition, internal and external data have a survival bias, since typically one does not have data of all collapsed companies. The idea of scenario analysis is to estimate frequency and severity of risk events via expert opinions taking into account bank environment factors with reference to events that have occurred (or may have occurred) in other banks. Scenario analysis is forward looking and can reflect changes in the banking environment. It is important to not only quantify the operational risk capital but also provide incentives to business units to improve their risk management policies, which can be accomplished through scenario analysis. By itself, scenario analysis is very subjective but combined with loss data it is a powerful tool to estimate operational risk losses. Bayesian inference is a statistical technique well suited for combining expert opinions and historical data. In this paper, we present examples of the Bayesian inference methods for operational risk quantification.

This article begins with a broad historical overview detailing how school-based sexuality education has been taught from a specific kind of heterosexual perspective that has excluded lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified (LGBTQ) students as well as heterosexual students who do not fall along culturally dominant heterosexual lines. To illustrate such exclusionary sexuality education, we examine the discourses of exclusion in U.S.-based and international models of sexuality education. Then we turn to a continuum of sexuality education programs ranging from no sexuality education at all, abstinence-only, abstinence-based, to comprehensive, and anti-oppressive approaches. We conclude by offering ideas about the ideal characteristics or qualities needed for sexuality education to be inclusive of LGBTQ youth. This would not only stem the tide of the negative impact exclusionary sexuality education practices have had on these youth, but also such an educational experience—which would involve an inclusive interdisciplinary approach across the curriculum—would likely be beneficial in a variety of ways to all students.

There is an increasing amount of empirical work investigating the sense of agency, i.e. the registration that we are the initiators of our own actions. Many studies try to relate the sense of agency to an internal feed-forward mechanism, called the ''comparator model''. In this paper, we draw a sharp distinction between a non-conceptual level of feeling of agency and a conceptual level of judgement of agency. By analyzing recent empirical studies, we show that the comparator model is not able to explain either. Rather, we argue for a two-step account: a multifactorial weighting process of different agency indicators accounts for the feeling of agency, which is, in a second step, further processed by conceptual modules to form an attribution judgement. This new framework is then applied to disruptions of agency in schizophrenia, for which the comparator model also fails. Two further extensions are discussed: We show that the comparator model can neither be extended to account for the sense of ownership (which also has to be differentiated into a feeling and a judgement of ownership) nor for the sense of agency for thoughts. Our framework, however, is able to provide a unified account for the sense of agency for both actions and thoughts.

Imagination can be defined broadly as the manipulation of information that is not directly available to an agent's sensors. However, the topic of imagination raises representational, physiological, and phenomenological issues that cannot be tackled easily without using the body as a reference point. Within this framework, we define functional imagination as the mechanism that allows an embodied agent to simulate its own actions and their sensory consequences internally, and to extract behavioural benefits from doing so. In this paper, we present five necessary and sufficient requirements for the implementation of functional imagination, as well as a minimal architecture that meets all these criteria. We also present a taxonomy for categorising possible architectures according to their main attributes. Finally, we describe experiments with some simple architectures designed using these principles and implemented on simulated and real robots, including an extremely complex anthropomimetic humanoid.

Many neuroimaging studies of the mirror neuron system (MNS) examine if certain voxels in the brain are shared between action observation and execution (shared voxels, sVx). Unfortunately, finding sVx in standard group analyses is not a guarantee that sVx exist in individual subjects. Using unsmoothed, single-subject analyses we show sVx can be reliably found in all 16 investigated participants. Beside the ventral premotor (BA6/44) and inferior parietal cortex (area PF) where mirror neurons (MNs) have been found in monkeys, sVx were reliably observed in dorsal premotor, supplementary motor, middle cingulate, somatosensory (BA3, BA2, and OP1), superior parietal, middle temporal cortex and cerebellum. For the premotor, somatosensory and parietal areas, sVx were more numerous in the left hemisphere. The hand representation of the primary motor cortex showed a reduced BOLD during hand action observation, possibly preventing undesired overt imitation. This study provides a more detailed description of the location and reliability of sVx and proposes a model that extends the original idea of the MNS to include forward and inverse internal models and motor and sensory simulation, distinguishing the MNS from a more general concept of sVx.

The cerebellum has attracted the attention of theorists and modelers for many years 1-3 . The attraction is that the cerebellar cortex is both quite simple and well documented. It has only one output cell, the inhibitory Purkinje cell (P-cell), and four main classes of interneuron; it is also extremely regular in its cytoarchitecture. Hence, most people believe that there is a common computational operation performed by all cerebellar areas, although processing specific inputs and sending outputs to different extracerebellar targets. However, knowledge of the anatomical and cerebellar circuitry has outstripped our understanding of the function or functions that the cerebellum performs. In this paper, we will review models that are aimed at understanding the cerebellum's possible role in motor learning and control at the functional level.

During the last few years there have been many changes in the way that financial institutions model risk. New risk capital regulations have motivated a need for vertically integrated risk systems based on a unified framework throughout the whole office. If the risk exposures in all locations of a large institution are to be aggregated, the risk system must also be horizontally integrated. Internationally, regulators are pushing towards an environment where traders, quants and risk managers from all offices are referring to risk measures generated by the same models. This is a huge task which remains a challenge for many financial institutions, but the result should be useful to manage risks for allocation of capital between different areas of the firm, and to set traders limits as well as levels of capital reserves.

A necessary strategy to improve our technologies is to provide them with useful pieces of deterministic previous knowledge about the processes and the equipment. Our attention was previously focused on the industrial control systems, implemented with low level devices (controllers, sensors, actuators), that need knowledge on the specific controlled plants as well as on the general theoretical foundations. This was done on-line with the help of internal models, or off-line with planners whose design is assisted by simulations. This paper is orienting the same effort in the direction of the intelligent sensors field. A brief overview of the relationship between sensors and knowledge is provided. A particular architecture of sensors relying on modeling techniques and some internal model estimators for the velocity and for the weariness of the railway cars are illustrating the role of the models in sensors and estimators.