Mother-infant bonding is universal to all mammalian species. In this review, we describe the manner in which reciprocal communication between the mother and infant leads to mother-infant bonding in rodents. In rats and mice, mother-infant bond formation is reinforced by various social stimuli, such as tactile stimuli and ultrasonic vocalizations (USVs) from the pups to the mother, and feeding a...

While individual components for semantic data integration are commonly available, end-to-end solutions are rare. We demonstrate DataOps, a seamless Anything-to-RDF semantic data integration toolkit. DataOps supports the integration of both semantic and non-semantic data from an extensible host of different formats. Setting up data sources end-to-end works in three steps: (1) accessing the data ...

In this paper, we present the system design and the key techniques of our mobile robot platform called KeJia-LC, who won the first place in the demo challenge on Benchmarkinng Service Robots in RoboCup 2015. Given the fact that KeJia-LC is a low-cost version of our KeJia robot without shoulder and arm, several new technical demands comparing to RoboCup@Home are highlighted for better understand...

In two previous essays (Perron, 2006 and Arsenault & Perron 2008), I have conceptualized the partaking in a game as a cognitive frame, as an ongoing process. To explain the gamer's immersion and progression through a game, I have resorted to the figure of the cycle, of the spiral instead of talking about Huizinga's " magic circle ". In this model, three interconnected spirals are represented: t...

AIM To develop a conceptual tool to assist healthcare workers and management in the implementation of a kangaroo mother care programme. METHODS A qualitative research approach was followed and methods included on-site observations and informal conversational interviews, as well as unstructured, in-depth interviews with senior managers, doctors and nurses at two large training hospitals in the...

This work introduces a smart cross-layer architecture composed of a battery-less smart solar power system, a simple configurable power-aware MAC protocol, and an intelligent fuzzy-logic based autonomous configuration protocol. The design of the proposed protocols is derived from the fundamental principles of complementary areas, namely: electronics, protocol engineering, and artificial intellig...

OLAP servers based on relational backends typically exploit materialized aggregate tables to improve response times of complex analytical queries. One of the key problems in this context is the view selection problem: choosing the optimal set of aggregation tables (called configuration) for a given workload. In this paper, we present a system that continuously monitors the workload and raises a...

Recent developments in the disease situation surrounding Schmallenberg virus (SBV) in northern Europe are discussed in the latest outbreak assessment from the International Disease Monitoring (IDM) team at Defra. In the assessment, which was published on 23 Apr 2012, the IDM team says that AHVLA laboratories are currently validating a serological ELISA that has become commercially available in ...

Kangaroo care (KC) is the practice of skin-to-skin contact between infant and parent. In developing countries, KC for low-birthweight infants has been shown to reduce mortality, severe illness, infection and length of hospital stay. KC is also beneficial for preterm infants in high-income countries. Cardiorespiratory and temperature stability, sleep organization and duration of quiet sleep, neu...