Interactive Quantum Chemistry Enabled by Machine Learning, Graphical Processing Units, and Cloud Computing.

Modern quantum chemistry algorithms are increasingly able to accurately predict molecular properties that are useful for chemists in research and education. Despite this progress, performing such calculations is currently unattainable to the wider chemistry community, as they often require domain expertise, computer programming skills, and powerful computer hardware. In this review, we outline methods to eliminate these barriers using cutting-edge technologies. We discuss the ingredients needed to create accessible platforms that can compute quantum chemistry properties in real time, including graphical processing units-accelerated quantum chemistry in the cloud, artificial intelligence-driven natural molecule input methods, and extended reality visualization. We end by highlighting a series of exciting applications that assemble these components to create uniquely interactive platforms for computing and visualizing spectra, 3D structures, molecular orbitals, and many other chemical properties.

Crocetin Mitigates Irradiation Injury in an In Vitro Model of the Pubertal Testis: Focus on Biological Effects and Molecular Mechanisms.

Infertility is a potential side effect of radiotherapy and significantly affects the quality of life for adolescent cancer survivors. Very few studies have addressed in pubertal models the mechanistic events that could be targeted to provide protection from gonadotoxicity and data on potential radioprotective treatments in this peculiar period of life are elusive. In this study, we utilized an in vitro model of the mouse pubertal testis to investigate the efficacy of crocetin to counteract ionizing radiation (IR)-induced injury and potential underlying mechanisms. Present experiments provide evidence that exposure of testis fragments from pubertal mice to 2 Gy X-rays induced extensive structural and cellular damage associated with overexpression of PARP1, PCNA, SOD2 and HuR and decreased levels of SIRT1 and catalase. A twenty-four hr exposure to 50 µM crocetin pre- and post-IR significantly reduced testis injury and modulated the response to DNA damage and oxidative stress. Nevertheless, crocetin treatment did not counteract the radiation-induced changes in the expression of SIRT1, p62 and LC3II. These results increase the knowledge of mechanisms underlying radiation damage in pubertal testis and establish the use of crocetin as a fertoprotective agent against IR deleterious effects in pubertal period.

Staring us in the face? An embodied theory of innate face preference.

Human expertise in face perception grows over development, but even within minutes of birth, infants exhibit an extraordinary sensitivity to face-like stimuli. The dominant theory accounts for innate face detection by proposing that the neonate brain contains an innate face detection device, dubbed 'Conspec'. Newborn face preference has been promoted as some of the strongest evidence for innate knowledge, and forms a canonical stage for the modern form of the nature-nurture debate in psychology. Interpretation of newborn face preference results has concentrated on monocular stimulus properties, with little mention or focused investigation of potential binocular involvement. However, the question of whether and how newborns integrate the binocular visual streams bears directly on the generation of observable visual preferences. In this theoretical paper, we employ a synthetic approach utilizing robotic and computational models to draw together the threads of binocular integration and face preference in newborns, and demonstrate cases where the former may explain the latter. We suggest that a system-level view considering the binocular embodiment of newborn vision may offer a mutually satisfying resolution to some long-running arguments in the polarizing debate surrounding the existence and causal structure of newborns' 'innate knowledge' of faces.

A comparison between radial artery compression devices for patent hemostasis after transradial percutaneous interventions.

OBJECTIVES: Patent hemostasis (PH) is essential for preventing radial artery occlusion (RAO) after trans-radial procedures; however, it remains unclear how it should be obtained. The aim of this multicenter randomized study was to evaluate whether the use of an adjustable device (AD), inflated with a pre-determined amount of air (AoA), was more effective than a non-adjustable device (non-AD) for achieving PH, thereby reducing the incidence of RAO. METHODS: We enrolled a total of 480 patients undergoing transradial procedure at 3 Italian institutions. Before the procedure, a modified Reverse Barbeau Test (mRBT) was performed in all patients to evaluate the AoA to be eventually inflated in the AD. After the procedure, patients were randomized into 2 groups: (1) AD Group, using TR-Band (Terumo) inflated with the pre-determined AoA; and 2) non-AD Group, using RadiStop (Abbott). An RBT was performed during compression to demonstrate the achievement of PH, as well as 24 hours later to evaluate the occurrence of RAO. RESULTS: PH was more often obtained in the AD Group compared with the non-AD Group (90% vs 64%, respectively, P less than .001), with no difference in terms of bleedings. RAO occurred more often in the non-AD Group compared with the AD Group (10% vs 3%, respectively, P less than .001). Of note, mRBT was effective at guiding AD inflation and identifying high-risk patients in whom PH was more difficult to obtain. CONCLUSIONS: The use of AD, filled with a predetermined AoA, allowed PH significantly more often compared with non-AD, providing a significantly reduced incidence of RAO.

Remember me - user-centered implementation of working memory architectures on an industrial robot.

The present research is innovative as we followed a user-centered approach to implement and train two working memory architectures on an industrial RB-KAIROS + robot: GRU, a state-of-the-art architecture, and WorkMATe, a biologically-inspired alternative. Although user-centered approaches are essential to create a comfortable and safe HRI, they are still rare in industrial settings. Closing this research gap, we conducted two online user studies with large heterogeneous samples. The major aim of these studies was to evaluate the RB-KAIROS + robot's appearance, movements, and perceived memory functions before (User Study 1) and after the implementation and training of robot working memory (User Study 2). In User Study 1, we furthermore explored participants' ideas about robot memory and what aspects of the robot's movements participants found positive and what aspects they would change. The effects of participants' demographic background and attitudes were controlled for. In User Study 1, participants' overall evaluations of the robot were moderate. Participant age and negative attitudes toward robots led to more negative robot evaluations. According to exploratory analyses, these effects were driven by perceived low experience with robots. Participants expressed clear ideas of robot memory and precise suggestions for a safe, efficient, and comfortable robot navigation which are valuable for further research and development. In User Study 2, the implementation of WorkMATe and GRU led to more positive evaluations of perceived robot memory, but not of robot appearance and movements. Participants' robot evaluations were driven by their positive views of robots. Our results demonstrate that considering potential users' views can greatly contribute to an efficient and positively perceived robot navigation, while users' experience with robots is crucial for a positive HRI.

Invasive Assessment of Coronary Microcirculation: A State-of-the-Art Review.

A significant proportion of patients presenting with signs and symptoms of myocardial ischemia have no "significant" epicardial disease; thereby, the assessment of coronary microcirculation gained an important role in improving diagnosis and guiding therapy. In fact, coronary microvascular dysfunction (CMD) could be found in a large proportion of these patients, supporting both symptoms and signs of myocardial ischemia. However, CMD represents a diagnostic challenge for two main reasons: (1) the small dimension of the coronary microvasculature prevents direct angiographic visualization, and (2) despite the availability of specific diagnostic tools, they remain invasive and underused in the current clinical practice. For these reasons, CMD remains underdiagnosed, and most of the patients remain with no specific treatment and quality-of-life-limiting symptoms. Of note, recent evidence suggests that a "full physiology" approach for the assessment of the whole coronary vasculature may offer a significant benefit in terms of symptom improvement among patients presenting with ischemia and non-obstructive coronary artery disease. We analyze the pathophysiology of coronary microvascular dysfunction, providing the readers with a guide for the invasive assessment of coronary microcirculation, together with the available evidence supporting its use in clinical practice.

Perception is Only Real When Shared: A Mathematical Model for Collaborative Shared Perception in Human-Robot Interaction.

Partners have to build a shared understanding of their environment in everyday collaborative tasks by aligning their perceptions and establishing a common ground. This is one of the aims of shared perception: revealing characteristics of the individual perception to others with whom we share the same environment. In this regard, social cognitive processes, such as joint attention and perspective-taking, form a shared perception. From a Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) perspective, robots would benefit from the ability to establish shared perception with humans and a common understanding of the environment with their partners. In this work, we wanted to assess whether a robot, considering the differences in perception between itself and its partner, could be more effective in its helping role and to what extent this improves task completion and the interaction experience. For this purpose, we designed a mathematical model for a collaborative shared perception that aims to maximise the collaborators' knowledge of the environment when there are asymmetries in perception. Moreover, we instantiated and tested our model via a real HRI scenario. The experiment consisted of a cooperative game in which participants had to build towers of Lego bricks, while the robot took the role of a suggester. In particular, we conducted experiments using two different robot behaviours. In one condition, based on shared perception, the robot gave suggestions by considering the partners' point of view and using its inference about their common ground to select the most informative hint. In the other condition, the robot just indicated the brick that would have yielded a higher score from its individual perspective. The adoption of shared perception in the selection of suggestions led to better performances in all the instances of the game where the visual information was not a priori common to both agents. However, the subjective evaluation of the robot's behaviour did not change between conditions.

Human- or object-like? Cognitive anthropomorphism of humanoid robots.

Across three experiments (N = 302), we explored whether people cognitively elaborate humanoid robots as human- or object-like. In doing so, we relied on the inversion paradigm, which is an experimental procedure extensively used by cognitive research to investigate the elaboration of social (vs. non-social) stimuli. Overall, mixed-model analyses revealed that full-bodies of humanoid robots were subjected to the inversion effect (body-inversion effect) and, thus, followed a configural processing similar to that activated for human beings. Such a pattern of finding emerged regardless of the similarity of the considered humanoid robots to human beings. That is, it occurred when considering bodies of humanoid robots with medium (Experiment 1), high and low (Experiment 2) levels of human likeness. Instead, Experiment 3 revealed that only faces of humanoid robots with high (vs. low) levels of human likeness were subjected to the inversion effects and, thus, cognitively anthropomorphized. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for robotic and psychological research are discussed.

Is It Me or the Robot? A Critical Evaluation of Human Affective State Recognition in a Cognitive Task.

A key goal in human-robot interaction (HRI) is to design scenarios between humanoid robots and humans such that the interaction is perceived as collaborative and natural, yet safe and comfortable for the human. Human skills like verbal and non-verbal communication are essential elements as humans tend to attribute social behaviors to robots. However, aspects like the uncanny valley and different technical affinity levels can impede the success of HRI scenarios, which has consequences on the establishment of long-term interaction qualities like trust and rapport. In the present study, we investigate the impact of a humanoid robot on human emotional responses during the performance of a cognitively demanding task. We set up three different conditions for the robot with increasing levels of social cue expressions in a between-group study design. For the analysis of emotions, we consider the eye gaze behavior, arousal-valence for affective states, and the detection of action units. Our analysis reveals that the participants display a high tendency toward positive emotions in presence of a robot with clear social skills compared to other conditions, where we show how emotions occur only at task onset. Our study also shows how different expression levels influence the analysis of the robots' role in HRI. Finally, we critically discuss the current trend of automatized emotion or affective state recognition in HRI and demonstrate issues that have direct consequences on the interpretation and, therefore, claims about human emotions in HRI studies.

A Biological Inspired Cognitive Framework for Memory-Based Multi-Sensory Joint Attention in Human-Robot Interactive Tasks.

One of the fundamental prerequisites for effective collaborations between interactive partners is the mutual sharing of the attentional focus on the same perceptual events. This is referred to as joint attention. In psychological, cognitive, and social sciences, its defining elements have been widely pinpointed. Also the field of human-robot interaction has extensively exploited joint attention which has been identified as a fundamental prerequisite for proficient human-robot collaborations. However, joint attention between robots and human partners is often encoded in prefixed robot behaviours that do not fully address the dynamics of interactive scenarios. We provide autonomous attentional behaviour for robotics based on a multi-sensory perception that robustly relocates the focus of attention on the same targets the human partner attends. Further, we investigated how such joint attention between a human and a robot partner improved with a new biologically-inspired memory-based attention component. We assessed the model with the humanoid robot iCub involved in performing a joint task with a human partner in a real-world unstructured scenario. The model showed a robust performance on capturing the stimulation, making a localisation decision in the right time frame, and then executing the right action. We then compared the attention performance of the robot against the human performance when stimulated from the same source across different modalities (audio-visual and audio only). The comparison showed that the model is behaving with temporal dynamics compatible with those of humans. This provides an effective solution for memory-based joint attention in real-world unstructured environments. Further, we analyzed the localisation performances (reaction time and accuracy), the results showed that the robot performed better in an audio-visual condition than an audio only condition. The performance of the robot in the audio-visual condition was relatively comparable with the behaviour of the human participants whereas it was less efficient in audio-only localisation. After a detailed analysis of the internal components of the architecture, we conclude that the differences in performance are due to egonoise which significantly affects the audio-only localisation performance.