A new microscope stand for use with the LKB Ultratome III and cryokit

A method is described for estimating the number of blocked pore channels and pore density and spatial distribution by the staining of the exterior pore openings of unobstructed pores with uranyl acetate, and identification of them using backscattered electron atomic number contrast imaging in the scanning electron microscope.     

Polymer degradation. V. Changes in molecular weight distributions during sonic irradiation of polyisobutene

Gel permeation chromatography was used to follow changes in the molecular weight distribution of a polyisobutene, initial M _v = 466,000, during degradation induced by sonic irradiation. Seven samples taken at times of 200–163,500 sec. were studied. In general, a steady decrease in molecular weight was observed, although a bimodal distribution was present after 20,000 sec. irradiation. Various measures of inhomogeneity, M _w/M _n, U, etc., were examined. The function, σ_n/M _w, where σ_n is the standard deviation of the number distribution, is considered as a measure of the relative distribution. It is shown to be almost constant throughout the degradation.     

Some Observations on the Semantics of “Information”

The term Information is widely used in the rhetoric of the Information Society, a rhetoric which some critics have judged to be empty, at least in part because of the overextension and inconsistent use of this word. We review the emergence of the concept of Information, identify a number of dimensions of similarity and difference in the way that the concept of Information is used and defined, and point up some specific areas where further critical attention is needed, of especial concern to the field of Information Systems. In particular we highlight some problems in identifying and understanding Information Work, and some research themes relevant to Virtual Organisations and Computer Supported Collaborative Work.     

Low temperature synthesis of calcium cobaltites in a solid state reaction

This paper presents synthesis of calcium cobaltites of the nominal composition of Ca₃Co₄O₉ prepared by the solid state reaction. The reaction between CaCO₃ and Co₃O₄ was investigated at 700–900 °C during 20 h and at 800 °C during 2–30 h. Mass changes, phase composition and Co⁺³, Co⁺⁴ content were examined. Stability of the calcined specimens was tested by DTA/TG. It was found that two phases: Ca₃Co₄O₉ and Ca₃Co₂O₆ were present as a result of calcinations above 800 °C. On the other hand, the temperature of 750 °C was too low for calcium cobaltites to be synthesized. Mono-phase material with Ca₃Co₄O₉ phase was obtained after calcinations at 800 °C but non-stoichiometry of the compound and its relation to the calcinations time were found. Once synthesized, the compound was stable up to 900 °C.     

Mitigating Circulating Common-Mode Currents Between Parallel Soft-Switched Drive Systems

A mathematical model that Is developed for a generalized drive system, including common-mode passive and active elements, is used to explore the issues of paralleling soft-switched resonant dc-link drive systems. Differences between the modulation pattern for each drive system cause common voltage disturbances, which lead to significant circulating currents between the drive systems. Control methods for actively compensating for common-mode circulating currents or reducing the common- mode voltage disturbances are investigated. Practical modifications to the drive system controls are implemented to reduce the circulating currents between paralleled systems.     

Attachment style,social skills,and Facebook use amongst adults

Research suggests that online communication may benefit those high in social anxiety. The current study examined Facebook use from the perspective of adult attachment theory, exploring relationships between attachment anxiety and avoidance and Facebook use. Social skills have been found to be related to attachment style and internet use thus we also examined the role of these skills. A diverse sample of adult participants (N = 617; 50.1% female) completed a self report questionnaire measuring attachment dimensions, social skills, and Facebook use and experience. In line with predictions grounded in attachment theory, we found that individuals with high attachment anxiety used Facebook more frequently, were more likely to use it when feeling negative emotions and were more concerned about how others perceived them on Facebook. High attachment avoidance was related to less Facebook use, less openness and less positive attitudes towards Facebook. These relationships remained when social skills were controlled. These results suggest that Facebook may serve attachment functions and provide a basis for understanding how online communication may be related to attachment styles.     

(A)Social reputation: Exploring the relationship between online video game involvement and social competence

Affordable and accessible Internet has changed the way video games are played, allowing individuals to connect worldwide in shared gaming spaces. On the surface participation within these environments may seem socially beneficial, as these highly social, playful spaces allow players to connect, interact with, and learn from others. However, there is a growing concern that increased participation within online gaming environments comes with a wide variety of social consequences, contributing to numerous losses in ‘offline’ sociability. While considerable research has examined these claims, consistent relationships between social competence and online video game involvement have yet to be established. The current work (N = 515) aimed to examine the extent to which online video game involvement may support, or undermine, the development and maintenance of traditional social skills. The results indicate that there are unique relationships between social skills and video game involvement within online gaming populations. However, among online video game players, these links were not as negative or broad as hypothesized. The results of this assessment dispute the anecdotal attribution of a global level of social ineptitude amongst online video game players and provide insight into the potential effects of online video game play on skill development and maintenance.     

Optimization of Robust Loss Functions for Weakly-Labeled Image Taxonomies

The recently proposed ImageNet dataset consists of several million images, each annotated with a single object category. These annotations may be imperfect, in the sense that many images contain multiple objects belonging to the label vocabulary. In other words, we have a multi-label problem but the annotations include only a single label (which is not necessarily the most prominent). Such a setting motivates the use of a robust evaluation measure, which allows for a limited number of labels to be predicted and, so long as one of the predicted labels is correct, the overall prediction should be considered correct. This is indeed the type of evaluation measure used to assess algorithm performance in a recent competition on ImageNet data. Optimizing such types of performance measures presents several hurdles even with existing structured output learning methods. Indeed, many of the current state-of-the-art methods optimize the prediction of only a single output label, ignoring this ‘structure’ altogether. In this paper, we show how to directly optimize continuous surrogates of such performance measures using structured output learning techniques with latent variables. We use the output of existing binary classifiers as input features in a new learning stage which optimizes the structured loss corresponding to the robust performance measure. We present empirical evidence that this allows us to ‘boost’ the performance of binary classification on a variety of weakly-supervised labeling problems defined on image taxonomies.