Dysfunctions of Spatial Cognition in Schizophrenic Patients

ABSTRACT

Twenty outpatients who fulfilled the criteria for a diagnosis of schizophrenia and 28 control participants were invited to learn a route through a complex outdoor environment. They were then tested in tasks intended to explore various aspects of their memorized representation of the navigational episode. Compared to controls, the patients showed significant impairment in both the verbal production of route directions and the drawing of sketch maps. They referred to fewer landmarks and provided fewer directional instructions than the controls, while making a greater number of irrelevant comments. When invited to distinguish between photographs showing views of landmarks encountered along the route and distractors, they performed as well as the controls, and they had similar response times. However, when they were presented with pairs of actual photographs taken along the route, they displayed special difficulty in deciding which of the two landmarks was encountered first along the route. This difficulty in retrieving the sequential structure of the navigational episode suggests that the patients' memories were not accurately linked to one another in their mental representation of the route. These findings are interpreted in the context of current hypotheses about the hippocampal impairment that affects schizophrenic patients.     

Strategies for in-orbit calibration of drag-free control systems

Drag-Free Satellites (DFS) are a class of scientific satellite missions designed for research on fundamental physics as well as geodesy. They consist, basically, of a small inner satellite (test mass) located in a cavity inside a larger satellite, the normal one. The Drag-Free Attitude Control System (DFACS) is the most complex technology on-board these satellites. This key technology allows the residual accelerations on experiments on board the satellites to be significantly reduced. In order to achieve this very low disturbance environment (for some missions <10⁻¹⁴ g) the drag-free control system has to be optimized. This optimization process is required because of uncertainties in system parameters that demand a robustness of the control system. This paper will present approaches for in-orbit calibration of drag-free control systems. The discussion includes modeling, with scale factors and cross couplings, possible excitation signals, comparison of different parameter identification/estimation methods as well as simulation results.     

A Survey of Field-Aligned Mach Number and Plasma Beta in the Solar Wind

We have surveyed solar wind plasma beta and field-aligned Alfvénic Mach number using Ulysses and Wind data. We show the characteristic timescale and occurrence frequency of ‘magnetically dominated’ solar wind, whose interaction with a planetary magnetosphere may produce a bow shock with multiple shock fronts. We discuss radial, latitudinal, and solar cycle effects. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Aeronomical processes in cometary atmospheres: The carbon compounds' puzzle

The deduction of coma abundances, ultimately leading to the abundance of parent molecules escaping the nucleus of a comet, requires to study a very large number of physical phenomena. Those include excitation processes of the emission of the light, production and loss processes of coma species, interaction with the solar wind… etc. In this paper, as an example, we shall review our knowledge on carbon bearing species and attempt to estimate the C/OH abundance ratio in various comets. We shall reach the interesting conclusion that this parameter greatly varies from comet to comet. It will then be appropriate to discuss if this is the effect of an “aging” process or if this is due to a “primordial” difference among the objects under study.     

Current Systems in Planetary Magnetospheres and Ionospheres

The interaction of planets with the solar wind produces a diversity of current systems, yet these can be classified into only a few different types, which include ionospheric currents, currents carried by magnetospheric boundaries like the magnetopause or ionopause, magnetotail currents, and currents flowing inside the magnetospheres, like ring currents, plasma sheet currents and currents aligned to the magnetic field lines (or field-aligned currents).     

A new algorithm for optical observations of space debris with the TAROT telescopes

Since 2004, we observe satellites in the geostationary orbit with a network of robotic ground based fully automated telescopes called TAROT. One of them is located in France and the second at ESO, La Silla, Chile. The system processes the data in real time. Its wide field of view is useful for the discovery, the systematic survey and for the tracking of both catalogued and un-catalogued objects. We present a new source extraction algorithm based on morphological mathematic, which has been tested and is currently under implementation in the standard pipeline. Using this method, the observation strategy will correlate the measurements of the same object on successive images and give better detection rate and false alarm rate than the previous one. The overall efficiency and quality of the survey of the geostationary orbit has drastically improved and we can now detect satellites and debris in different orbits like Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). Results obtained in real conditions with TAROT are presented.     

Personality,social support and affective states during simulated microgravity in healthy women

This study investigated the time-course of stress and recovery states and their relations to social support and personality traits in healthy women during a long-term head-down tilt bed rest. Personality, social support and affective states were assessed in 16 women exposed to simulated microgravity for a 60-day duration involving three stages: a 20-day baseline control period (BDC), a 60-day head-down tilt bed rest (HDT) and a 20-day post-HDT ambulatory recovery period (R+). Participants were divided into two groups: an exercise (Exe, n = 8) and a control group (Ctl, n = 8). All the participants experienced significantly more stress during the HDT period. But exercise did not improve the impaired effects of simulated microgravity. The Exe group perceived more stress and less recovery than the Ctl group during the HDT period. Among the five major personality factors, only Neuroticism was related to both social and affective variables. Neuroticism was positively associated with stress and negatively associated with recovery and social support (S-SSQ). Practical implications in psychological countermeasures for better dealing with the key human factor in spaceflights are discussed.     

Proportional fuzzy feed-forward architecture control validation by wind tunnel tests of a morphing wing

In aircraft wing design, engineers aim to provide the best possible aerodynamic performance under cruise flight conditions in terms of lift-to-drag ratio. Conventional control sur-faces such as flaps, ailerons, variable wing sweep and spoilers are used to trim the aircraft for other flight conditions. The appearance of the morphing wing concept launched a new challenge in the area of overall wing and aircraft performance improvement during different flight segments by locally altering the flow over the aircraft's wings. This paper describes the development and appli-cation of a control system for an actuation mechanism integrated in a new morphing wing structure. The controlled actuation system includes four similar miniature electromechanical actuators dis-posed in two parallel actuation lines. The experimental model of the morphing wing is based on a full-scale portion of an aircraft wing, which is equipped with an aileron. The upper surface of the wing is a flexible one, being closed to the wing tip; the flexible skin is made of light composite materials. The four actuators are controlled in unison to change the flexible upper surface to improve the flow quality on the upper surface by delaying or advancing the transition point from laminar to turbulent regime. The actuators transform the torque into vertical forces. Their bases are fixed on the wing ribs and their top link arms are attached to supporting plates fixed onto the flex-ible skin with screws. The actuators push or pull the flexible skin using the necessary torque until the desired vertical displacement of each actuator is achieved. The four vertical displacements of the actuators, correlated with the new shape of the wing, are provided by a database obtained through a preliminary aerodynamic optimization for specific flight conditions. The control system is designed to control the positions of the actuators in real time in order to obtain and to maintain the desired shape of the wing for a specified flight condition. The feasibility and effectiveness of the developed control system by use of a proportional fuzzy feed-forward methodology are demon-strated experimentally through bench and wind tunnel tests of the morphing wing model.