Three fractions of choline O-acetyltransferase (ChAT) (EC 2.3.1.6) were solubilized from a nerve ending fraction of rat forebrain using three sequential washes of an increasingly chaotrophic nature (100 mM sodium phosphate, pH 7.4; 500 mM NaCl; 2% Triton DN-65) as previously described (Benishin, C.G., and P.T. Carroll (1983) J. Neurochem. 41: 1030-1039). The molecular weights of the soluble (Na...

An earlier study of a collaborative chat intervention in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) identified negative effects on attrition stemming from a requirement for students to be matched with exactly one partner prior to beginning the activity. That study raised questions about how to orchestrate a collaborative chat intervention in a MOOC context in order to provide the benefit of synchronou...

BACKGROUND There is a recent trend of a worldwide increase in the incidence of autistic spectrum disorder. Early identification and intervention have proved to be beneficial. The original version of the Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (CHAT) was a simple screening tool for identification of autistic children at 18 months of age in the United Kingdom. Children with an absence of joint attention...

Indirect immunofluorescence methods using a mouse monoclonal antibody raised to rat choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) revealed dense networks of ChAT-immunoreactive fibers in the superior cervical ganglion, the stellate ganglion, and the celiac superior mesenteric ganglion of the rat. Numerous and single ChAT-immunoreactive cell bodies were observed in the stellate and superior cervical ganglia,...

We use speech shadowing to create situations wherein people converse in person with a human whose words are determined by a conversational agent computer program. Speech shadowing involves a person (the shadower) repeating vocal stimuli originating from a separate communication source in real-time. Humans shadowing for conversational agent sources (e.g., chat bots) become hybrid agents ("echobo...

This study reports the results of a laboratory experiment exploring interactions between humans and a conversational agent. Using the ChatScript language, we created a chat bot that asked participants to describe a series of images. The two objectives of this study were (1) to analyze the impact of dynamic responses on participants’ perceptions of the conversational agent, and (2) to explore be...

Internet and chat mediums provide important and quite useful information about human life in different societies such as their current interests, habits, social behaviors and criminal tendency. In this study, we have presented an intelligent identification system that is designed to identify the sex of a person in a Turkish chat medium. To do this task, a target oriented chat agent is implement...