Ayako Watanabe

Mapping Facial Expression to Internal States Based on Intuitive Parenting

Sympathy is a key issue in interaction and communication between robots and their users. In developmental psychology, intuitive parenting is considered the maternal scaffolding upon which children develop sympathy when caregivers mimick or exaggerate the child’s emotional facial expressions [1]. We model human intuitive parenting using a robot that associates a caregiver’s mimicked or exaggerated facial expressions with the robot’s internal state to learn a sympathetic response. The internal state space and facial expressions are defined using psychological studies and change dynamically in response to external stimuli. After learning, the robot responds to the caregiver’s internal state by observing human facial expressions. The robot then expresses its own internal state facially if synchronization evokes a response to the caregiver’s internal state.

Acquiring peekaboo communication: Early communication model based on reward prediction

Infants become sensitive to the regular behavior of their caregivers by the end of 4 months old. In this paper, we propose a communication system for a robot to acquire early communication. The acquisition of the communication is proceeded by the interactions of the three components; the memory module, the reward prediction module and the internal state module. The emotional change triggers the transfer of the sensor data stored in the short-term memory to the long-term memory. Once the memory segments are formed, the sensor data are compared with them. When the coincidence of the starting signal of stored data with the sensor data is detected, the prediction of the reward begins. The responses of the simulated robot with the proposed system are examined with and without the memory module when the caregiver takes the regular and irregular peekaboo communication. The results partly explain the behaviors observed in infants.

Multiple ETS Family Proteins Regulate PF4 Gene Expression by Binding to the Same ETS Binding Site

In previous studies on the mechanism underlying megakaryocyte-specific gene expression, several ETS motifs were found in each megakaryocyte-specific gene promoter. Although these studies suggested that several ETS family proteins regulate megakaryocyte-specific gene expression, only a few ETS family proteins have been identified. Platelet factor 4 (PF4) is a megakaryocyte-specific gene and its promoter includes multiple ETS motifs. We had previously shown that ETS-1 binds to an ETS motif in the PF4 promoter. However, the functions of the other ETS motifs are still unclear. The goal of this study was to investigate a novel functional ETS motif in the PF4 promoter and identify proteins binding to the motif. In electrophoretic mobility shift assays and a chromatin immunoprecipitation assay, FLI-1, ELF-1, and GABP bound to the −51 ETS site. Expression of FLI-1, ELF-1, and GABP activated the PF4 promoter in HepG2 cells. Mutation of a −51 ETS site attenuated FLI-1-, ELF-1-, and GABP-mediated transactivation of the promoter. siRNA analysis demonstrated that FLI-1, ELF-1, and GABP regulate PF4 gene expression in HEL cells. Among these three proteins, only FLI-1 synergistically activated the promoter with GATA-1. In addition, only FLI-1 expression was increased during megakaryocytic differentiation. Finally, the importance of the −51 ETS site for the activation of the PF4 promoter during physiological megakaryocytic differentiation was confirmed by a novel reporter gene assay using in vitro ES cell differentiation system. Together, these data suggest that FLI-1, ELF-1, and GABP regulate PF4 gene expression through the −51 ETS site in megakaryocytes and implicate the differentiation stage-specific regulation of PF4 gene expression by multiple ETS factors.

PREP1, MEIS1 homolog protein, regulates PF4 gene expression

We have previously demonstrated that homeodomain proteins, MEIS1 and PBXs, transactivate the PF4 gene through the novel regulatory element termed TME. This study focuses on Pbx regulating protein 1 (PREP1), a MEIS1 homolog protein, for its transcriptional activity in the PF4 promoter. PREP1 binds to the TME in HEL cells. PREP1 was expressed in human megakaryocytes that differentiated from CD34(+) cells. EMSA shows that either PREP1 by itself or PREP1/PBX complexes bind to the two TGACAG motifs in the TME and activate the PF4 promoter. Furthermore, PREP1 and PREP1/PBX complexes synergistically activate the PF4 promoter with GATA-1 and ETS-1. These data demonstrate that PREP1 is also an important transcription factor that regulates PF4 gene expression such as MEIS1. Additionally, these data imply functional similarities and differences between PREP1 and MEIS1 in the regulation of PF4 gene expression.

EHBP1L1 coordinates Rab8 and Bin1 to regulate apical-directed transport in polarized epithelial cells

The novel protein EHBP1L1 links Rab8 to Bin1and dynamin to regulate apical transport in epithelial cells.

Detection and categorization of facial image through the interaction with caregiver

This paper models the process of applied behavior analysis (ABA) therapy of autistic children for eye contact as the learning of the categorization and preference through the interaction with a caregiver. The proposed model consists of the learning module and visual attention module. The learning module learns the visual features of higher order local autocorrelation (HLAC) that are important to discriminate the visual image before and after the reward is given. The visual attention module determines the attention point by a bottom-up process based on saliency map and a top-down process based on the learned visual feature. The experiment with a virtual robot shows that the robot successfully learns visual features corresponding to the face firstly and the eyes afterwards through the interaction with a caregiver. After the learning, the robot can attend to the caregiverpsilas face and eyes as autistic children do in the actual ABA therapy.

Compliance Control for Biped Walking on Rough Terrain

In this paper, we propose a control system that changes the compliance based on the walking speed to stabilize biped walking on rough terrain. The proposed system changes walking modes depends on its walking speed. In the downhill terrain, when the walking speed increases, the stiffness of the ankle in the support phase is controlled so as to brake the increased speed. In the uphill terrain, when the walking speed decreases, the stiffness of the waist joint is controlled and the desired trajectory for the supported leg is shifted so as not to falls down backward. To validate the efficiency of the proposed system, the stability of walking with the proposed system is examined in the two dimensional dynamics simulation. It is shown that the robot with the proposed system can walk in the more variable rough terrain and with the broader walking speed than without changing the stiffness of the joints.

Solvent Dependence of the Ultrafast Ground State Recovery Dynamics of Phenol Blue

Abstract We have studied femtosecond ground state recovery dynamics of phenol blue (PB) by pump-probe spectroscopy with a time resolution of 33 fs. Multiexponential decay with time constants extending from 300 fs to 10 ps were observed. Some low frequency intramolecular quantum beats were also observed. Solvent dependence of these decays and beats are discussed.

Solute Dependence of three pulse photon echo peak shift measurement

We have measured three pulse photon echo peak shifts (3PEPS) of some dyes in methanol at room temperature. The peak shifts were smaller and 3PEPS decays were faster for dyes with longer peak absorption wavelengths.