Bilinguals engage in qualitatively different code-switching patterns (alternation, insertion, and congruent lexicalization) to different degrees, according to their engagement in different types of interactional contexts (single-language context, dual-language context, and dense code-switching context). Drawing on the adaptive control hypothesis, we examined whether bilinguals’ code-switching patterns would differentially shape multiple aspects of cognitive control (interference control, salient cue detection, and opportunistic planning). We found that a dense code-switching context, which predominantly involves insertion and congruent lexicalization, was positively associated with verbal opportunistic planning but negatively associated with interference control and salient cue detection. In contrast, a dual-language context, which predominantly involves alternation, was not associated with interference control or salient cue detection, but with significantly reduced response times for opportunistic planning. Our findings partially corroborate the theoretical predictions of the adaptive control hypothesis. Altogether, our study illustrates the importance of bilinguals’ disparate code-switching practices in shaping cognitive control outcomes.

This article discusses the text of the work On Simples attributed to Dioscorides. It argues that in fifteen places the transmitted text is faulty, and it proposes emendations. It also studies certain types of insertions made in the text by its most recent editor, Max Wellmann, and concludes that they are unnecessary. Finally, it discusses two points where On Simples sheds light on Dioscorides’ De materia medica.

Mobile robotic manipulators can augment the strength and dexterity of human operators in unstructured environments. Here, the control system for a six degree-of-freedom heavy-lift mobile manipulator for lifting and inserting payloads on the deck of a ship is described. The robotic hardware and the application present several control challenges, including structural resonances, high joint friction that varies with time, limited sensors for measuring the joint friction, complex interaction with the environment, tight tolerances for the insertion tasks, lack of bilateral force feedback of the contact forces, and ship motions. The control system enables an operator to perform insertion tasks using feedback of tactile clues of the manipulator position, and reduces the effects of friction with a combination of sensor-based, adaptive, and model-based methods of friction compensation. The control architecture is validated in simulation and on a laboratory manipulator.

It is shown that coherence conditions for monoidal categories concerning associativity are analogous to coherence conditions for symmetric strictly monoidal categories, where associativity arrows are identities. Mac Lane's pentagonal coherence condition for associativity is decomposed into conditions concerning commutativity, among which we have a condition analogous to naturality and a degenerate case of Mac Lane's hexagonal condition for commutativity. This decomposition is analogous to the derivation of the Yang-Baxter equation from Mac Lane's hexagon and the naturality of commutativity. The pentagon is reduced to an inductive definition of a kind of commutativity.

Homelessness includes a wide range of people, from those living on the street (strictly homeless) to people living temporarily with relatives or friends because they have lost their home. Programes for the homeless should design strategies aimed at encouraging insertion processes, thus considering the different dimensions involved. Within this framework Caritas delivers an array of assistance services for the homeless facing the stages of insertion. In Spain there are 315 centres offering meals for 20 000 people, most of them along with other services such as reception, residential premises or day-care centres. Caritas is responsible for 42% of them. Overall, it is easier to get a lunch than any other meal during the day, followed by dinner, while it is difficult to get a breakfast.

Social dining rooms are valuable places for a first contact (first stage of the insertion process) and even to start the second stage (personal recovery).

This paper presents a compliant control method for insertion of complex objects with concavities. Most work on robot assembly using compliant motion control schemes focuses on overcoming jamming conditions for simple peg-in-hole problems, and cannot be used for complex shapes frequently encountered in assembly applications. When an object is being inserted to a hole or slot with a small clearance, a contact path is issued to compensate for uncertainties. When the object shape is complex, however, the contact state changes several times and severely, making compliant control difficult. The algorithm presented here is capable of generating satisfactory compliant motion control in spite of changing contact states. During the execution of a nominal motion plan, it computes the actual position of the contact point from the force/torque sensor reading using a contact localization algorithm. It then dynamically updates the center for compliance to the computed contact point, and minimize the chance of jamming and unwanted collisions. The control scheme has been implemented on hardware and tested on the task of inserting a T-shape into a C-shape involving a very tight tolerance. The insertion motion was accomplished by a sequence of 2 translational and 1 rotational compliant motions, and successfully executed by the proposed compliant motion controller.

Some theorems on the existence of continuous real-valued functions on a topological space (for example, insertion, extension, and separation theorems) can be proved without involving uncountable unions of open sets. In particular, it is shown that well-known characterizations of normality (for example the Katětov-Tong insertion theorem, the Tietze extension theorem, Urysohn's lemma) are characterizations of normal σ-rings. Likewise, similar theorems about extremally disconnected spaces are true for σ-rings of a certain type. This σ-ring approach leads to general results on the existence of functions of class α.