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AIIDE 2014 is the second AIIDE event that has featured a playable experience track. This paper describes the seven entries that were accepted in the 2014 track, as well as the motivation behind the track and the criteria used to evaluate and accept entries.

There is no consensus on the best optogenetic tool for neuronal inhibition. Lamprey parapinopsin (‘Lamplight’) is a Gi/o-coupled bistable animal opsin that can be activated and deactivated by short and long wavelength light, respectively. Since native mechanisms of neuronal inhibition frequently employ Gi/o signalling, we asked here whether Lamplight could be used for optogenetic silencing. We show that short (405nm) and long (525nm) wavelength pulses repeatedly switch Lamplight between stable signalling active and inactive states, and that combining these wavelengths can be used to achieve intermediate levels of activity. We demonstrate that these properties can be applied to produce switchable and scalable neuronal hyperpolarisation, and suppression of spontaneous spike firing in the mouse hypothalamic suprachiasmatic nucleus. We show that expressing Lamplight in (predominantly) ON bipolar cells can photosensitise retinas following advanced photoreceptor degeneration, and that 405 and 525nm stimuli can produce responses of opposite sign in output neurons of the retina. Lamplight-driven responses to both activating (405nm) and deactivating (525nm) light can occur within 500ms and be elicited by intensities at least 10x below threshold for available inhibitory optogenetic tools. We conclude that Lamplight can co-opt endogenous signalling mechanisms to allow optogenetic inhibition that is scalable, sustained and rapidly reversible.

Intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) express the photopigment melanopsin and project to central targets, allowing them to contribute to both image-forming and non-image forming vision. Recent studies have highlighted chemical and electrical synapses between ipRGCs and neurons of the inner retina, suggesting a potential influence from the melanopsin-born signal to affect visual processing at an early stage of the visual pathway. We investigated melanopsin responses in ganglion cell layer (GCL) neurons of both intact and dystrophic mouse retinas using 256 channel multi-electrode array (MEA) recordings. A wide 200 μm inter-electrode spacing enabled a pan-retinal visualization of melanopsin’s influence upon GCL activity. Upon initial stimulation of dystrophic retinas with a long, bright light pulse, over 37% of units responded with an increase in firing (a far greater fraction than can be expected from the anatomically characterized number of ipRGCs). This relatively widespread response dissipated with repeated stimulation even at a quite long inter-stimulus interval (ISI; 120 s), to leave a smaller fraction of responsive units (

Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) are a family of kinases associated predominantly with cell cycle control, making CDK inhibitors interesting candidates for anti-cancer therapeutics. However, retinal toxicity (loss of photoreceptors) has been associated with CDK inhibitors, including the pan-CDK inhibitor AG-012896. The purpose of this research was to use a novel planar sectioning technique to determine CDK expression profiles in the ex vivo human retina with the aim of identifying isoforms responsible for CDK retinotoxicity. Four CDK isoforms (CDK11, 16, 17 and 18) were selected as a result of IC50 data comparing neurotoxic (AG-012986 and NVP-1) and non-neurotoxic (dinaciclib and NVP-2) CDK inhibitors, with IC50s at CDK11 showing a clear difference between the neurotoxic and non-neurotoxic drugs. CDK11 was maximally expressed in the photoreceptor layer, whereas CDK16, 17 and 18 showed maximal expression in the inner nuclear layer. CDK5 (an isoform associated with retinal homeostasis) was maximally expressed in the retinal ganglion cell layer. Apart from CDK18, each isoform showed expression in the photoreceptor layer. The human Müller cell line MIO-M1 expressed CDK5, 11, 16 and 17 and AG-01298 (0.02–60 µM) caused a dose-dependent increase in MIO-M1 cell death. In conclusion, CDK11 appears the most likely candidate for mediation of photoreceptor toxicity. RNA profiling can be used to determine the distribution of genes of interest in relation to retinal toxicity in the human retina.

The assessment of a client’s need to be admitted to acute psychiatric care during an emergency room (ER) visit can be quite difficult. This article outlines ways in which an effective evaluation of a client’s strengths and abilities can be integrated into the assessment of clients presenting in the ER. Assessing client strengths integrates well with traditional forms of mental health assessment that focus more exclusively on the exploration of risks and challenges faced by the client. However, the investigation of a client’s strengths requires training and skill in a strength-based model, such as Solution-Focused Therapy (SFT). The Crisis and Response Team at the Red Deer Regional Hospital, Alberta, Canada, has found that the skillful use of SFT during crisis assessment enables mental health professionals to provide a more balanced and client-centered picture of the client. This more balanced assessment can better determine a client’s level of risk and level of resources. A balanced assessment also improves decisions about admission and provides a more helpful experience for clients. This article explores how SFT in conjunction with the medical model in psychiatric crises supports decision making, leads to goal-oriented strategies by therapists, empowers clients, and facilitates positive conversations. It also describes the commitment to ongoing learning required to establish and reinforce the skills required to provide a balanced assessment.

Recent academic debates on the geography curriculum for schools have highlighted the need for more focus on how knowledge is socially produced. While this may help to bridge the gap between the school curriculum and epistemological developments in academia, it is unclear how such theoretical frameworks can improve pupils' learning about the world. In this paper theoretical approaches to knowledge are challenged by considering, from an alternative viewpoint, how pupils themselves act as knowledge producers. Drawing on the holistic educational philosophy informing the Steiner-Waldorf approach to curriculum knowledge and pedagogy, it is argued that subject knowledge needs to suit the way pupils' thinking naturally evolves, giving particular attention to the role that imagination and sense of wonder play in both the cognitive process and pupil engagement. The epistemological status of the pupil in geography education can therefore be enhanced by considering approaches to education that operate outside normal ...

Strategic tools are indispensible for business and competitive analysis. Yet we know very little about managers' internal logic as they put these tools into practical use. We situate our study in a business school context using action learning prior to the manifestation of practice to complement our understanding of practice. Using Personal Construct Theory and Repertory Grids, our mid-range theorizing showed that, contrary to current thinking about strategic tools, managers think in dualities (often paradoxically) and have a preference for multiple-tools-in-use, tools that provide different perspectives, peripheral vision, connected thinking, simultaneously help differentiate and integrate complex issues, and guide the thinking process. These findings are important for designing better tools and the nurturing of critical managerial competencies needed for a complicated world. Our study's focus also has wider implications for scholars as we see our own material evaluated by those who will put these lessons into practice.

This study aims at developing an evaluation framework of strategic information systems (SIS) and evaluating the SIS planning and implementation by using a cognitive approach called the repertory grid technique. The findings are based on in-depth interviews with chief information officers (CIOs) involved with SIS developments in their organisations. This exploratory study builds on a cognitive methodology and enables us to develop the evaluation framework of SIS within the CIO's mind. In a practical viewpoint, we evaluated the effectiveness of the essential activities in the SIS planning and implementation. Results showed that activities on analysing industry and environment, analysing information system weakness and strength, formulating SIS strategy, identifying SIS initiatives, prioritising and allocating resources for SIS, documenting SIS, and liaising with top management team are well performed.

The existence of lengthy wait lists, a not uncommon condition found in many public community mental health services, prompted a small team that was performing the intake function for its clinic to launch a pilot project of Brief Therapy. Amidst a traditionally oriented service and in the face of understandable skepticism, this team constructed a coherent plan of action founded upon the solution focused model of brief therapy. Not only did the results more than validate the team's initial expectations, they so impressed their management team with their data, that even in times of marked fiscal restraint, the Brief Therapy Program was expanded.

We investigated whether dyad members' relational schemas, a cognitive representation of exchange experiences, would affect how leaders and members evaluate and misevaluate the quality of their exchange relationships. Based on data derived from repertory grid technique and two waves of survey data, we found that leaders and members tended to form different relational schemas of their partners. While leaders developed LMX schemas focusing on work-related issues, members' schemas focused more on interpersonal concerns. These findings confirmed that the different schemas employed by each party affect how they stored, retrieved and (mis)evaluated their LMX experiences with each other. Implications for theory and practice, limitations of this study, and future research directions are discussed.

Previous application of the repertory grid technique in the strategy field has been noteworthy. However, all have been imprisoned by their adherence to strict element choice based on grid protocol. Elements in past studies have either focused on all competitor companies, or all strategic decisions, or all decision makers, or all strategic issues, inter alia, in an effort to learn more about how strategists see, interpret, and make sense of their strategy experiences. This research note outlines how current strategy research can be advanced by the use of more heterogeneous elements for grid applications, hence allowing researchers to go deeper into eliciting more complex strategic cognitions on how strategy is crafted and recrafted in a world constructed and reconstructed.

Purpose – The aim of this article is to investigate how managers see, interpret and make sense of their performance management system experiences and recommend the way forward for both policy and practice, in what makes effective appraisal systems.Design/methodology/approach – The study applied the repertory grid to elicit the personal constructs of how managers make sense of their appraisal experiences. The cognitive mapping methodology allows the researcher to go deep into the respondents' “theories in use” to provide new insights on how they “think”. This, in turn, allows a better understanding of the language managers use to make sense of the experiences.Findings – Core conceptual dimensions, cognitive maps and cluster diagrams were generated, providing implications for research, practice and new directions for future research.Researchlimitations/implications – Although the application of the grid technique was time‐consuming, the finer grain level of analysis provided a deeper appreciation of manager...

There is a growing need for models of human diseases that utilise native, donated human tissue in order to model disease processes and develop novel therapeutic strategies. In this paper we assessed the suitability of adult human retinal explants as a potential model of chronic retinal ganglion cell (RGC) degeneration. Our results confirmed that RGC markers commonly used in rodent studies (NeuN, βIII Tubulin and Thy-1) were appropriate for labelling human RGCs and followed the expected differential expression patterns across, as well as throughout, the macular and para-macular regions of the retina. Furthermore, we showed that neither donor age nor post-mortem time (within 24 h) significantly affected the initial expression levels of RGC markers. In addition, the feasibility of using human post mortem donor tissue as a long-term model of RGC degeneration was determined with RGC protein being detectable up to 4 weeks in culture with an associated decline in RGC mRNA and significant, progressive, apoptotic labelling of NeuN(+) cells. Differences in RGC apoptosis might have been influenced by medium compositions indicating that media constituents could play a role in supporting axotomised RGCs. We propose that using ex vivo human explants may prove to be a useful model for testing the effectiveness of neuroprotective strategies.

The Best Laid Plans is an interactive narrative video game that uses cognitive-inspired fast planning techniques to generate stories with conflict during play. Players alternate between acting out a plan and seeing that plan thwarted by non-player characters. The Glaive narrative planner combines causal-link-based computational models of narrative with the speed of fast heuristic search techniques to adapt the story each time the player attempts a new plan.

Perceptions are important in determining performance appraisal system success. The growing body of research in this area has clearly documented the differences in perceptions between appraisers and appraisees. However, many of these findings are predominately based on aspects of the system in judging its overall effectiveness and rely heavily on self-report questionnaire responses with weak methodological rigor. Not much is known about the deeper cognitive perceptions of appraisers and appraisees in better explaining their attitudinal and behavioral outcomes. This paper breaks away from conventional questionnaire-generated perceptions and applies a unique clinical cognitive mapping methodology called the repertory grid technique to elicit the personal constructs of how real respondents perceive appraisal systems based on their real-life experiences. The method allowed the investigation to go much deeper than past research into the core perceptions that influenced respondents' attitudes and subsequent behaviors. Though the findings showed some commonality in personal constructions of appraisal systems with those found in the literature, new constructs, core perceptual dimensions, and collective cognitive maps were elicited for the very first time, opening up new questions and issues for further research. Implications to theory and practice are also discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Modern day crime scene investigation methods are continually being enhanced by the application of new technologies to improve the analysis and presentation of crime scene information, helping to solve and prosecute crimes. The IC-CRIME Snapshots system provides a games-based tool to help train forensic photographers in a virtual environment.

Secretory proteins of IgE receptor activated mast cells and basophils play a pivotal role in the generation of immediate and long term immune responses in allergy and type I hypersensitivity.The present study aims to generate a 2-D map and profile of proteins secreted from a high secretory variant of the rat basophilic leukemia cell line, RBL-2H3.1, which in view of the difficulty associated with gaining adequate numbers of pure primary mast cell and basophiles, represents an accepted model system for the study and standardization of the methodology to characterize the secretome of these cell types.A 2-D map of secretory proteins was generated by 2-D PAGE and a shotgun mass spectrometric approach carried out for protein identification.Study resulted into identification of 299 proteins released from resting and IgE receptor activated RBL-2H3.1 cells after 90 s, 30 min and 3 h antigen challenge. Further sequence analysis identified ~53% of total proteins as secretory proteins which could be attributed to classical and non-classical secretory pathways. Additionally, functional classification of classic secretory proteins verified the presence of proteins belonged to cytokines, receptors, membrane proteins, lysosomal proteins and proteins associated with specific sub-cellular localizations such as endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, nucleus, cytoplasm and ribosome. According to this data the presence of some secretory proteins such as cytokines (e.g. MCP-2, PF-4, CSF-1 and TGF-β1) are all subject to Ag challenge which may point to their importance toward pathogenesis in allergic diseases.In view of both a beneficial and adverse role of mast cell mediators in health and disease, an identification of temporal changes in the secretory pattern may form the basis for future tailor made intervention strategies that may enable us to harvest the therapeutic potential inherent in mast cell exocytosis while inhibiting/attenuating negative outcomes.

Novel immune-type receptors (NITRs) are encoded by large multi-gene families and share structural and signaling similarities to mammalian natural killer receptors (NKRs). NITRs have been identified in multiple bony fish species, including zebrafish, and may be restricted to this large taxonomic group. Thirty-nine NITR genes that can be classified into 14 families are encoded on zebrafish chromosomes 7 and 14. Herein, we demonstrate the expression of multiple NITR genes in the zebrafish ovary and during embryogenesis. All 14 families of zebrafish NITRs are expressed in hematopoietic kidney, spleen and intestine as are immunoglobulin and T cell antigen receptors. Furthermore, all 14 families of NITRs are shown to be expressed in the lymphocyte lineage, but not in the myeloid lineage, consistent with the hypothesis that NITRs function as NKRs. Sequence analyses of NITR amplicons identify known alleles and reveal additional alleles within the nitr1, nitr2, nitr3, and nitr5 families, reflecting the recent evolution of this gene family., Journal Article, Research Support, N.I.H. Extramural, Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S., info:eu-repo/semantics/published

As a fundamental and critical component of music information retrieval (MIR) systems, music genre classification has attracted considerable research attention. Automatically classifying music by genre is, however, a challenging problem due to the fact that music is an evolving art. While most of the existing work categorizes music using features extracted from music audio signals, in this paper, we propose to exploit the semantic information embedded in tags supplied by users of social networking websites. Particularly, we consider the tag information by creating a graph of tracks so that tracks are neighbors if they are similar in terms of their associated tags. Two classification methods based on the track graph are developed. The first one employs a classification scheme which simultaneously considers the audio content and neighborhood of tracks. In contrast, the second one is a two-level classifier which initializes genre label for unknown tracks using their audio content, and then iteratively updates the genres considering the influence from their neighbors. A set of optimizing strategies are designed for the purpose of further enhancing the quality of the two-level classifier. Extensive experiments are conducted on real-world data collected from Last.fm. Promising experimental results demonstrate the benefit of using tags for accurate music genre classification.

The psychological analysis of strategic management issues has gained a great deal of momentum in recent years. Much can be learned by entering the black box of strategic thinking of senior executives and bring new insights on how they see, make sense of, and interpret their everyday strategic experiences. This chapter will focus on a powerful cognitive mapping tool called the Repertory Grid Technique and demonstrate how it has been used in the strategy literature along with how a new and more refined application of the technique can enhance the elicitation of complex strategic cognitions for strategy and Board of Directors research.

Given calls for more cognitive approaches to investigate the underlying tensions of paradoxes, we administered a clinical psychological methodology (grounded in Personal Construct Theory) to elicit...

Extant techniques falling under the general umbrella of cognitive mapping/knowledge elicitation have yet to be adapted in ways suitable to enable strategy researchers to investigate how decision makers incorporate emotion and affect into their representations of strategic knowledge, a pressing priority given the mounting evidence concerning the primacy of these factors as a behavioral foundation for dynamic capabilities development. This paper reports the findings of two studies demonstrating the feasibility of adapting the repertory grid technique, a robust method widely known and commonly used in strategic management, for this purpose.

Despite much scholarly attention being given to strategy-as-practice, we still lack a deep understanding about how strategy is accomplished in organisations. Building on current debates, the presen...

Summary-Research is reviewed which suggests that hyperventilation syndrome is an underdiagnosed disorder for the presentation of many patients experiencing apparent anxiety states. In a test of this hypothesis, 21 normal individuals (9 female) underwent a 2 min period of intentional hyperventilation following a 10 min baseline phase. Hyperventilation was accompanied by increased subjective anxiety and tachycardia, and indications of peripheral vasoconstriction. Following hyperventilation, Ss experienced increased levels of state anxiety and perceived autonomic arousal, as indexed by self-report instruments. These results support the hypothesis that undiagnosed hyperventilatory phenomena may be etiologically implicated in states of pathologic anxiety. INTRODIJCIION In recent years, it has become increasingly evident that patients apparently suffering from anxiety states are actually experiencing symptoms secondary to hyperventilation (Lum, 1975; Campemolle, Hoogduin and Joelle, 1979). The reported incidence of hyperventilation syndrome has been estimated to range from 6 to 10% of patients seen by medical specialists (Lum, 1977) and the syndrome is characterized by a broad spectrum of physiological and psychological effects similar to those experienced by patients with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder or Agoraphobia (American Psychiatric Association, 1980). Apart from general practice, patients with hyperventilation syndrome are often initially seen in emergency rooms, cardiology departments and neurology clinics, only to be eventually referred to psychiatrists or psychologists when no organic basis can be determined for the patient’s myriad and complex array of symptoms. Hyperventilation can be simply defined as the maintenance of ventilatory efforts in excess of metabolic needs, and is not usually detectable through behavioral observation of the patient’s breathing (Magarian, 1982). The presence of frequent sighing, complaints of a dry mouth, and observing the patient licking his lips are suggestive indications for hyperventilation and the diagnosis can be more definitely arrived at through a hyperventilation challenge test. If acute intentional