Movement Choices Research Articles

TRANSPORTATION OF OVERSIZE AND HEAVY-WEIGHT CARGOES IN THE TRANSPORT SYSTEM

In this article the problems and restrictions of transportation of oversize and heavy cargo in transportsystems by different types of transport have been presented. The method of selecting optimal mode fortransportation of cargoes by various means of transport or their combination has been submitted. Themodular design of vehicles for delivery of cargoes a large mass ( more than 500t) and oversized of groundtransports has been proposed. State graph and differential equations of transportation of cargoes by variousmeans have been compiled.The advantages and disadvantages of each mode of transport have been noted. Railway transport hasthe following advantages: all-weather, rhythmicity transportation over considerable distances. However, ithas significant disadvantages: stringent requirements for the dimensions of the loading, restrictions on cargo weight, low availability of railways in certain regions.The main advantages of road transport are: delivery cargo "door to door" almost unlimited load weight, free choice of tracks movement.

The Architecture of Decision-Making Processes: A Game of Chess in the Spatial Configuration of the River Thames London

Urban forms emerge from the interplay of social, economic, political and cultural forces, which are partly attributed to decision-making processes of urban planning and design. However, decision-making involves the everyday life of using and navigating in the built environment to the management of urban space. This paper seeks to understand the basic notion of how pedestrian movement is related to land use choices in the built form. The hypothesis is that movement itself involves a choice; that is, a decision-making of direction and destination, of passing through or of static behaviour. The density of movement flow is seen as a result of locations that potentially become attractors that have a rich distribution of land use. How we accommodate and modulate movement is thus important in helping us understand the multiple effects of everyday use that arises from decision-making processes and its subsequent effectuation in the configuration of urban space. Therefore, two key questions are addressed: first, how the types of movement choices influence and are influenced by the spatial layout; and second, how the distribution of land uses is affected by such choices. The paper uses Space Syntax and Game theory as a combination of theoretical frameworks that study independent and interdependent decision-making processes in urban space, to answer these questions. Taking the River Thames Path as an example, the research project focuses on the unconnected section of the river walk between London Bridge and Southwark Bridge. In analogy with a game of chess, the results demonstrate how different kinds of choices are ruled primarily by the location of commercial uses in the urban grid.

Reviewing the Role of Media Attributes in Mobilizing Protest Participation

Activist groups increasingly use computer-mediated communication (CMC) channels to mobilize large groups of consumers to persuade incumbent firms to change their contested strategies or practices. The attributes of CMC channels change the effectiveness of persuasion processes in organizations. Similarly, attributes may change the effectiveness of protest mobilization. Yet, organizational research to date has mostly neglected this potential effect. This paper systematically reviews the effect of CMC attributes on the antecedents of protest participation. We construct a conceptual framework based on social movement and media choice theory, which guides the systematic collation of online activism research. Three main themes emerge from the literature. First, we find that the interactivity of online activism decreases the need for formal mobilizing structures, while increasing the importance of informal mobilizing structures for protest diffusion and global cooperation between activist groups. Second, increased interactivity and user control provide an alternative media channel for consumers and resource-poor activist groups to express and bundle their grievances. Third, the degree of publicness and interactivity seems to stimulate the formation of multiple, online collective identities that are rather interest-based than identity-based. We conclude this paper with a conceptual model that highlights the most prominent relations found in literature and discuss the implications for future research and practitioners

LIQUIDITY SHOCKS AND THE SUPPLY OF CREDIT AFTER THE 2007–2008 CRISIS

ABSTRACTWe examine the impact of heightened liquidity risk in bank funding markets during the 2007–2008 subprime crisis on the supply of credit to firms internationally. Our sample comprises almost 800 banks lending in the syndicated loan market to borrowers from 48 advanced and emerging market economies. To control for simultaneous changes in demand, we relate within‐borrower changes in bank credit from multiple banks to banks' exposure to liquidity risk. To capture banks' vulnerability to the liquidity shocks that occurred during 2007–2008, we use measures of pre‐crisis reliance on wholesale funding. Our results suggest that banks that were more exposed to liquidity risk during the crisis reduced syndicated lending more than other banks. Our results are robust to alternate measures of vulnerability to liquidity risk, choice of sample period and simultaneous movements in exchange rates. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mechanisms of the influence of dopamine on the functioning of basal ganglia and movement choice (a comparison of models)

Previously, we proposed a unified model of the influence of dopamine on the functioning of the topically organized closed cortico-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical loops that are involved in movement choice and the processing of sensory information [Biosystems. 2001. 59(1): 7–14; 2007. 89(1–3): 227–235]. In this model, the activity of cortical neurons that initiate movement depends on the type of triggering of striatonigral and striatopallidal cells, which express D1 and D2 receptors, respectively, and form “direct” and “indirect” projections via the basal ganglia. The signals that pass via the “direct” and “indirect” pathways have disinhibiting and inhibiting influences on the thalamic cells that project to the cortex. According to our modulation rules, dopamine promotes long-term potentiation of the efficacy of cortical inputs, which strongly activate striatonigral and weakly activate striatopallidal neurons, and long-term depression of inputs that weakly activate striatonigral and strongly activate striatopallidal neurons. Therefore, dopamine synergistically increases disinhibition and decreases inhibition of thalamic neurons, which excite initially strongly activated cortical neurons. Simultaneously, thalamic neurons, which excite initially weakly activated cortical neurons, became less disinhibited and more inhibited. As a result of an increase in the activity of certain groups of striatonigral and striatopallidal neurons, one movement is selected and competing movements are suppressed. According to some models that consider modulation of only strong corticostriatal inputs, a dopamine-dependent increase in the activity of striatonigral neurons promotes the performance of a movement and weakening of the activity of striatopallidal cells prohibits a movement or suppresses competing movements. Modern experimental data support our model. The use of Cre-dependent viral expression of a genetically encoded calcium probe allowed to record the activities of identified striatal neurons with D1 and D2 receptors in mice that press a lever in response to a sensory stimulus. It was shown that this movement is preceded by a considerable increase in the activities of both striatonigral and striatopallidal cells [Nature. 2013. 494(7436): 238–242].

Modelling the learning of biomechanics and visual planning for decision-making of motor actions

Recent experiments showed that the bio-mechanical ease and end-point stability associated to reaching movements are predicted prior to movement onset, and that these factors exert a significant influence on the choice of movement. As an extension of these results, here we investigate whether the knowledge about biomechanical costs and their influence on decision-making are the result of an adaptation process taking place during each experimental session or whether this knowledge was learned at an earlier stage of development. Specifically, we analysed both the pattern of decision-making and its fluctuations during each session, of several human subjects making free choices between two reaching movements that varied in path distance (target relative distance), biomechanical cost, aiming accuracy and stopping requirement. Our main result shows that the effect of biomechanics is well established at the start of the session, and that, consequently, the learning of biomechanical costs in decision-making occurred at an earlier stage of development. As a means to characterise the dynamics of this learning process, we also developed a model-based reinforcement learning model, which generates a possible account of how biomechanics may be incorporated into the motor plan to select between reaching movements. Results obtained in simulation showed that, after some pre-training corresponding to a motor babbling phase, the model can reproduce the subjects’ overall movement preferences. Although preliminary, this supports that the knowledge about biomechanical costs may have been learned in this manner, and supports the hypothesis that the fluctuations observed in the subjects’ behaviour may adapt in a similar fashion.

Silenciosa conveniência: mulheres e Aids

O artigo é construído a partir de um olhar do campo de análise de políticas sociais, no âmbito do SUS; enfoca as políticas de saúde das mulheres e a política de controle da Aids para interpretar as vulnerabilidades das mulheres no contexto do HIV e Aids. Identifica os limites, estratégias de prevenção e assistência adotadas pelo SUS para combater o HIV/Aids, frente à adoção do ideário de Estado mínimo. A pesquisa documental realizada no Brasil é uma análise crítica e histórica, que abrange o período de 1992 a 2008. O estudo interpreta as escolhas estratégicas do sujeito feminista no âmbito da saúde das mulheres no Brasil frente à epidemia do HIV/Aids. Toma o princípio de integralidade contido no âmbito do Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) e nas políticas de saúde da mulher e na política de controle da Aids para interpretar as escolhas estratégicas do movimento feminista na área da saúde. A perspectiva que orienta este artigo é a de que os significados da ação feminista frente à epidemia da Aids estão para além do campo da saúde. Expõem-se os avanços e limites dos feminismos para coibir o avanço da epidemia da Aids plasmado por dentro de uma lógica de Estado capitalista, de cunho neoliberal, com normas patriarcais.

A low-frequency oscillatory neural signal in humans encodes a developing decision variable

We often make decisions based on sensory evidence that is accumulated over a period of time. How the evidence for such decisions is represented in the brain and how such a neural representation is used to guide a subsequent action are questions of considerable interest to decision sciences. The neural correlates of developing perceptual decisions have been thoroughly investigated in the oculomotor system of macaques who communicated their decisions using an eye movement. It has been found that the evidence informing a decision to make an eye movement is in part accumulated within the same oculomotor circuits that signal the upcoming eye movement. Recent evidence suggests that the somatomotor system may exhibit an analogous property for choices made using a hand movement. To investigate this possibility, we engaged humans in a decision task in which they integrated discrete quanta of sensory information over a period of time and signaled their decision using a hand movement or an eye movement. The discrete form of the sensory evidence allowed us to infer the decision variable on which subjects base their decision on each trial and to assess the neural processes related to each quantum of the incoming decision evidence. We found that a low-frequency electrophysiological signal recorded over centroparietal regions strongly encodes the decision variable inferred in this task, and that it does so specifically for hand movement choices. The signal ramps up with a rate that is proportional to the decision variable, remains graded by the decision variable throughout the delay period, reaches a common peak shortly before a hand movement, and falls off shortly after the hand movement. Furthermore, the signal encodes the polarity of each evidence quantum, with a short latency, and retains the response level over time. Thus, this neural signal shows properties of evidence accumulation. These findings suggest that the decision-related effects observed in the oculomotor system of the monkey during eye movement choices may share the same basic properties with the decision-related effects in the somatomotor system of humans during hand movement choices.

Turning passive detection systems into field experiments: an application using wetland fishes and enclosures to track fine-scale movement and habitat choice

Understanding habitat selection and movement remains a key question in behavioral ecology. Yet, obtaining a sufficiently high spatiotemporal resolution of the movement paths of organisms remains a major challenge, despite recent technological advances. Observing fine-scale movement and habitat choice decisions in the field can prove to be difficult and expensive, particularly in expansive habitats such as wetlands. We describe the application of passive integrated transponder (PIT) systems to field enclosures for tracking detailed fish behaviors in an experimental setting. PIT systems have been applied to habitats with clear passageways, at fixed locations or in controlled laboratory and mesocosm settings, but their use in unconfined habitats and field-based experimental setups remains limited. In an Everglades enclosure, we continuously tracked the movement and habitat use of PIT-tagged centrarchids across three habitats of varying depth and complexity using multiple flatbed antennas for 14 days. Fish used all three habitats, with marked species-specific diel movement patterns across habitats, and short-lived movements that would be likely missed by other tracking techniques. Findings suggest that the application of PIT systems to field enclosures can be an insightful approach for gaining continuous, undisturbed and detailed movement data in unconfined habitats, and for experimentally manipulating both internal and external drivers of these behaviors.

Neo-fascist or revolutionary leftist: Family politics and social movement choice in postwar Italy

This article examines the relations between parental politics and the choice of activists entering radical movements of the communist left or neo-fascist right between the late 1960s and early 1980s in Italy. Analysis reveals a dominant pattern of parent–child continuity that reproduced the main sociopolitical cleavage but also some discontinuity (with activists from non-partisan households over-represented). Overall the findings confirm the importance of primary social networks while also suggesting claims about generational revolt in the postwar West neglect the patterned complexity of intra-family political relations; overstate the importance of discontinuity; and underestimate the resilience of established cleavages.

Active Video-Gaming Effects on Balance and Mobility in Individuals with Chronic Stroke: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: Treatments that provide feedback, increase practice with multiple repetitions, and motivate patients are essential to rehabilitation post stroke. Objective: To determine whether playing active video games results in improved balance and mobility post stroke. Methods: Thirty participants with chronic (time since stroke = 3.0 [2.9] years) hemiparesis post stroke were randomly assigned to a gaming group or normal activity control group. Gaming systems provided participants with an interactive interface of real-time movement of either themselves or an avatar on the screen. Participants played games 50–60 minutes/day, 4 days/week, for 5 weeks. The intervention was strictly game-play, in standing position, without physical therapy. The control group received no special intervention and continued with normal activity. Both groups were tested prior to, following the 5 weeks (post test), and 3 months following the completion of the study. Outcome measures included the Fugl-Meyer Assessment, Berg Balance Scale, Dynamic Gait Index, Timed Up & Go, 6-minute walk test, 3-meter walk (self-selected and fast), and perception of recovery. Results: No statistically significant differences between or within groups were found through analysis of covariance (covaried for side of hemiparesis) at post test or follow-up. Although the within-group effect sizes were primarily indexed as “small” (< .36), the gaming group exhibited higher within-group effect sizes before and after testing than did the control group on all 7 dependent variables analyzed. Conclusions: Even though the only intervention was game-play, there were small positive effects. Therapist assistance in making more optimum movement choices may be needed before significant improvements are seen with commercially available, general purpose games.

Investigation and analysis of a floating population's settlement intention and environmental concerns: A case study in the Shawan River Basin in Shenzhen, China

China's floating population is one of the largest migrations in the world. In recent years, great efforts have been made to identify their socio-demographic characteristics. However, the extent of their concern about the local environment has had less attention in the research. In the major migration cities of China, large numbers of migrants have a serious environmental impact on the ecological environment. Their environmental concerns could influence local environment policy design and environment protection implementation. The role that the temporary nature of the floating population plays in their environmental perception is now attracting the attention of local administrations. Based on an investigation conducted in the Shawan River Basin of Shenzhen City, China, this paper studies the floating population's environmental concerns and possible movement choices, as well as some socio-demographic features. The results show that the percentage of migrants intending to settle in Shenzhen is much larger than previous studies indicated. As concerns local pollution problems, most respondents seem unconcerned and show indifferent attitudes. In particular, migrants ignore the heavy water pollution, which is the most serious pollution in the Basin. People who intend to settle down have more positive opinions on the local environment. The results also indicate that the migrants do not have enough knowledge or environmental awareness and they lack a sense of belonging, which should concern local supervisors and administration. Better education and social activities should be conducted to improve the situation.

The Experience of Choice in Physical Activity Contexts for Adults With Mobility Impairments

This exploratory study described the experiences of choice in physical activity contexts for adults with mobility impairments. The experiences of 3 female and 2 males with mobility impairments between 18 and 23 years of age were described using the interpretive phenomenological methods of individual interviews, written stories, and field notes. Thematic analysis revealed three themes: (a) interpreting the setting described participants' interpretation of the environment, person, and task when making movement choices; (b) alternative selection described how participants actively engaged in analyzing alternatives and choosing among them; and (c) implications of choices made described participants' evaluations of good and bad choices and what was learned. Evidence of effective choice making among adults with physical impairments suggests the potential efficacy of ecological task analysis as a pedagogical tool in physical activity contexts.

Optimal Control of Natural Eye-Head Movements Minimizes the Impact of Noise

When shifting gaze to foveate a new target, humans mostly choose a unique set of eye and head movements from an infinite number of possible combinations. This stereotypy suggests that a general principle governs the movement choice. Here, we show that minimizing the impact of uncertainty, i.e., noise affecting motor performance, can account for the choice of combined eye-head movements. This optimization criterion predicts all major features of natural eye-head movements-including the part where gaze is already on target and the eye counter-rotates-such as movement durations, relative eye-head contributions, velocity profiles, and the dependency of gaze shifts on initial eye position. As a critical test of this principle, we show that it also correctly predicts changes in eye and head movement imposed by an experimental increase in the head moment of inertia. This suggests that minimizing the impact of noise is a simple and powerful principle that explains the choice of a unique set of movement profiles and segment coordination in goal-directed action.

Colonial Legacies and the Struggle for Social Membership in a National Community: The 1946 People's Uprisings in Korea

The historical experience of colonialism exerts a profound influence upon emergent postcolonial societies. Yet colonial legacies are not passed on in precisely the same way; rather, they are contingent on particular historical processes. In the case of Korea, Japanese colonialism gave way to a brief liberation phase that was followed by another foreign occupation (the U.S. in the south and the U.S.S.R. in the north) during which efforts were made to rebuild the political community. Focusing on the 1946 people's uprisings, the largest popular social movement during the U.S. occupation period, as a pivotal historical event, this article examines why the primary target of the uprisings was not the foreign military government but fellow Koreans, especially police officers, bureaucrats, and wealthy landlords, thereby revealing how Japanese colonial rule influenced the movement's choice of targets as well as its eventual failure. Through this historical analysis, I demonstrate that internal conflicts among Koreans, which were created and rearticulated through Japanese colonial rule, became critical sources of social and political struggles under the American occupation, the important consequence of which lies in the creation of a pattern of internal exclusion that characterized South Korea's post-war political trajectory.

Dwelling in the Virtual Sonic Environment: A Phenomenological Analysis of Dancers’ Learning Processes

This article discusses the Embodied Generative Music (EGM) project carried out at the Institute of Electronic Music and Acoustics IEM in Austria. In investigating a new interface that combines motion capture and sound processing software with movement improvisation and performance, I focus on dancers’ learning processes of dwelling in the virtual sonic environment. Applying phenomenology and its concepts, I describe how dancers explore reversibility of sound and movement to shape this connection in an artistically expressive manner. The article proposes that dancers build bodily knowledge through both the sonic environment and their own passive and active, intuitive and deliberate, movement choices. While dwelling in a digital environment changes dancers’ habitual manners of behaving, it opens up to them new kinds of kinaesthetic opportunities of intimacy and pleasure in motion. The findings from this research reveal the importance of bodily interaction with virtual environments in developing new movement-based interfaces.

Improved simulation of nondeterministic Turing machines

The standard simulation of a nondeterministic Turing machine (NTM) by a deterministic one essentially searches a large bounded-degree graph whose size is exponential in the running time of the NTM. The graph is the natural one defined by the configurations of the NTM. All methods in the literature have required time linear in the size S of this graph. This paper presents a new simulation method that runs in time O ̃ ( S ) . The search savings exploit the one-dimensional nature of Turing machine tapes. In addition, we remove most of the time dependence on nondeterministic choices of states and tape head movements.

Sampling of Redistribution of Empty Vehicles for Personal Rapid Transit

A personal rapid transit (PRT) system uses compact, computer-guided vehicles running on dedicated guideways to carry individuals or small groups directly between pairs of stations. PRT vehicles operate on demand when a passenger requests service at his or her origin station. Because the number of trips requested from a station need not equal the number of trips ending there, some empty vehicles must move to balance the flows. The empty vehicle redistribution (EVR) problem prompts the decision to move empty vehicles reactively in response to known requests or proactively in anticipation of requests. This paper develops a new algorithm for the EVR problem called “sampling and voting” (SV). SV results in the choice of reactive movements with the use of a simple nearest-neighbor rule; the selection of proactive movements is derived by the generation of an ensemble of possible sequences of future passenger requests, the solution of a deterministic optimization problem for each sequence individually, and the discovery of the empty vehicle movements that are common among the sequences. Moving vehicles proactively is essential for providing short passenger waiting times. The new SV algorithm was tested in simulation with several case study systems, and it produced significantly shorter passenger waiting times than did existing EVR algorithms. Variants of the SV method developed here for PRT are also applicable to conventional taxi systems and emergency response systems.

Mechatronics, Design, and Modeling of a Motorcycle Riding Simulator

This paper describes a new motorcycle riding simulator whose purpose is twofold: 1) it can be used as a training tool for new riders in different scenarios, such as a normal traffic environments or in dangerous riding situations (avoidance, emergency braking, nearly failing or slipping situations, and bad weather conditions) and 2) it can be used to study motor cyclist behavior in such situations and rider-motorcycle interaction. Our studies have led to the development of an original five DOF mechanical platform including double haptic feedback on the handlebar. The remaining components are the basic movements consisting of pitch, roll, and yaw. These components are gathered in a parallel kinematics-type platform to enhance the movement bandwidth of the two-wheeled riding simulator. Despite its simplicity, the particular appeal of this simulator lies in the possibility of reproducing important motorcycle movements and inertial effects, which allow for the perception of sensations close to reality. The motivation behind the choice of platform movements and system actuation are described. Also, theoretical issues (modeling, identification, and control aspects) and performance results are provided.

Stochastic modelling of animal movement

Modern animal movement modelling derives from two traditions. Lagrangian models, based on random walk behaviour, are useful for multi-step trajectories of single animals. Continuous Eulerian models describe expected behaviour, averaged over stochastic realizations, and are usefully applied to ensembles of individuals. We illustrate three modern research arenas. (i) Models of home-range formation describe the process of an animal 'settling down', accomplished by including one or more focal points that attract the animal's movements. (ii) Memory-based models are used to predict how accumulated experience translates into biased movement choices, employing reinforced random walk behaviour, with previous visitation increasing or decreasing the probability of repetition. (iii) Lévy movement involves a step-length distribution that is over-dispersed, relative to standard probability distributions, and adaptive in exploring new environments or searching for rare targets. Each of these modelling arenas implies more detail in the movement pattern than general models of movement can accommodate, but realistic empiric evaluation of their predictions requires dense locational data, both in time and space, only available with modern GPS telemetry.