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Studies in psychology have long revealed that making personal choice involves multiple motivational consequences. It has only been recent, however, that the literature on neuroscience started to examine the neural underpinnings of personal choice and motivation. This chapter reviews this sparse, but emergent, body of neuroscientific literature to address possible neural correlates underlying personal choice. By conducting the review, we encourage future systematic research programs that address this topic under the new realm of “autonomy neuroscience.” The chapter especially focused on the following motivational aspects: (i) personal choice is rewarding, (ii) personal choice shapes preference, (iii) personal choice changes the perception of outcomes, and (iv) personal choice facilitates motivation and performance. The reviewed work highlighted different aspects of personal choice, but indicated some overlapping brain areas – the striatum and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) – which may play a critical role in motivational processes elicited by personal choice.

The authors develop a program, named eBraille, to translate Japanese text into braille and thereby generate braille documents easily. Public access to this program is provided to anyone via the Internet. The paper aims to evaluate the translation accuracy of the eBraille program.

eBraille is a CGI program that is accessible via a web browser. The core of the program is a braille translating engine called the Kobe University Intelligent Braille Engine for ChaSen (KUIC). It is based on Japanese Braille Transcription Rules (Japanese Braille Committee, 2001). To evaluate the translation accuracy of eBraille, a corpus was utilized that was created from ordinary text and braille newspaper articles.

The paper finds that eBraille translation accuracy is equivalent to or better than that of other stand‐alone braille translation programs. This result suggests that the program achieved the goal of being applicable for practical use. In addition, the program is utilized to make Kobe University Hospital brochures in braille for outpatients and inpatients. The brochures are available in the hospital and are favorably accepted by the blind and the visually impaired. This result suggests that the translation program can facilitate accessibility to information for patients.

The braille translation program is based on a client‐server system and is architecture‐independent. Moreover, it is a free system for creating braille text files for anyone who has access to a web browser.

The diagnosis of autism in adults often involves the use of tools recommended by NICE guidance but which are validated in children. The purpose of the paper is to establish the strength of the association between the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) scores and the final clinical outcome in an all intellectual quotients adult autism diagnostic service and to establish if this in any way relates with gender and intellectual ability.

The sample includes referrals to Leeds Autism Diagnostic Service in 2015 that received a clinical outcome. Sensitivity, specificity and positive and negative predictive values were calculated to evaluate ADI-R and final clinical outcomes. Logistic regression model was used to predict the effect of the scores in all the domains of ADI-R and the two-way interactions with gender and intellectual ability.

ADI-R has a high sensitivity and low specificity and is useful to rule out the presence of autism, but if used alone, it can over diagnose. Restricted stereotyped behaviours are the strongest predictor for autism and suggests that the threshold should be increased to enhance its specificity.

This is a single site study with small effect size, so results may not be replicable. It supports the combined use of ADI-R and Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule and suggests increasing ADI-R cut-offs to increase the specificity.

The clinical team may consider piloting a modified ADI-R as suggested by the results.

To the authors’ knowledge this is the only study of ADI-R in an adult population of all intellectual abilities.

Entomology is a useful tool when applied to engineering challenges that have been solved in nature. Especially when these special abilities of olfactory sensation, vision, auditory perception, fly, jump, navigation, chemical synthesis, exquisite structure and others were connected with mechanization, informationization and intelligentization of modern science and technology, and produced innumerable classical bionic products. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

All kinds of special abilities of insects and application status have been described and discussed in order to summarize the advanced research examples and supply bibliographic reference to the latters. Future perspectives and challenges in the use of insect bionics were also given.

In the period of life sciences and information sciences, insect bionics not only promoted the development of modern science and technology on the sides of mechanics, molecule, energy, information and control greatly but also provided new ideas and technologies for the crisis of science and technology, food, environment and ecosystem.

It may provide strategies to solve the problems and be a source of good ideas for researchers.

The pressure exerted on the body by clothes is one important factor affecting the comfort of clothing, it is an effective method to evaluate pressure comfort by physiology and psychology. The purpose of this paper is to measure, electroencephalography (EEG), an index of brain activity in order to examine the effect on brain activity conditions caused by oppression exerted by clothing on the body.

EEG power spectrum analysis was conduct to verify the electrophysiological characteristic of brain caused by pressure on the body by girdle.

Experimental results showed that the intensity of α waves in the pressure condition is decreased compared to the non-pressure condition, and the somatosensory activated by pressure of girdle mainly in occipital, frontal and parietal region of brain.

It was clarified that it is impossible to evaluate the clothes pressure by physiological technique of EEG, this study has enriched methods of evaluation pressure comfort.

Objective appraisal of pressure comfort is the basement of optimal design of clothing. The purpose of this paper is to study a new method to appraise pressure comfort through displacement distribution, and then explored the multiple relationship between pressure and displacement on the lower leg cross-section using finite element method (FEM) and curve fitting.

This paper presented a 2D simulation model of the lower leg cross-section consisting of three layer different mechanical properties, namely skin, soft tissue, and bone. Analyzed the relationship and variation tendency between contact pressure and strain, calculated the multiple relationship between pressure and displacement on the lower leg cross-section where located at the top part of men’s socks in detail, and then obtained the quadratic functional equation between angle and pressure/displacement ratio through segmented curve fitting using Origin 7.5 software.

In this research work, the mathematical equation is obtained which describe the relationship between angle and pressure/displacement of the top part of men’s socks. On the premise of the known contact pressure values on the lower leg cross-section, the corresponding displacement values on the human body surface can be obtained by the functional equation under stress, and this displacement could be used as an objective evaluation index for pressure comfort. Based on these conclusions, the authors could provide theoretical reference for pressure prediction and optimizing the design of clothing.

This paper is unconcerned with the simulating of pressure, strain, and displacement distribution when dressing during the course of walking and running.

The paper analyzed the relationship and variation tendency between contact pressure and strain using FEM, and then obtained the quadratic functional equation between angle and pressure/displacement ratio of the top part of socks. It can supply a new method to appraise pressure comfort.