Reality-based interaction affecting mental workload in virtual reality mental arithmetic training

ABSTRACT

The concept of digital game-based learning (DGBL) evolves rapidly together with technological enhancements of virtual reality (VR) and smart phones. However, the mental workload (MWL) that VR-training applications demand and motivational qualities originating from user experience (UX) should be identified in order to create effective and enjoyable training/learning challenges that fit with individual users’ capabilities. This study examined the effects of reality-based interaction (RBI) and VR on measures of student motivation and MWL, in a mental arithmetic game for secondary school pupils. In a randomised controlled trial with sixty school children, a mental arithmetic game was tested with three different interaction and two different presentation methods – VR RBI, VR head-mounted-display tapping and tablet flick-gesture. Results found a significant effect of RBI on MWL but no differences in enjoyment of training were found between VR-experience and tablet training-experience. In fact, adding the gaming-context to the mental arithmetic task created an enjoyable, motivating experience regardless of presentation or interaction-style.     

Enhancing urban infrastructure investment planning practices for a changing climate.

Climate change raises many concerns for urban water management because of the effects on all aspects of the hydrological cycle. Urban water infrastructure has traditionally been designed using historical observations and assuming stationary climatic conditions. The capability of this infrastructure, whether for storm-water drainage, or water supply, may be over- or under-designed for future climatic conditions. In particular, changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme rainfall events will have the most acute effect on storm-water drainage systems. Therefore, it is necessary to take future climatic conditions into consideration in engineering designs in order to enhance water infrastructure investment planning practices in a long time horizon. This paper provides the initial results of a study that is examining ways to enhance urban infrastructure investment planning practices against changes in hydrologic regimes for a changing climate. Design storms and intensity-duration-frequency curves that are used in the engineering design of storm-water drainage systems are developed under future climatic conditions by empirically adjusting the general circulation model output, and using the Gumbel distribution and the Chicago method. Simulations are then performed on an existing storm-water drainage system from NE Calgary to investigate the resiliency of the system under climate change.     

Ecophysiology and niche differentiation of Nitrospira-like bacteria, the key nitrite oxidizers in wastewater treatment plants.

Nitrite-oxidizing bacteria of the genus Nitrospira are key nitrifiers in wastewater treatment plants. Pure cultures of these organisms are unavailable, but cultivation-independent molecular methods make it possible to detect Nitrospira-like bacteria in environmental samples and to investigate their ecophysiology. Comprehensive screening of natural and engineered habitats and of public databases for 16S rRNA sequences of Nitrospira-like bacteria revealed a surprisingly high biodiversity in the genus Nitrospira, which comprises at least four phylogenetic sublineages. All Nitrospira-like bacteria detected in wastewater treatment plants belonged to the sublineages I and II. Subsequently, the population dynamics of different Nitrospira-like bacteria were monitored, by quantitative fluorescence in situ hybridization with rRNA-targeted probes, confocal laser scanning microscopy and digital image analysis, during incubation of nitrifying activated sludge in media containing different nitrite concentrations. These experiments showed that Nitrospira-like bacteria, which were affiliated with the phylogenetic sublineages I or II of the genus Nitrospira, responded differently to nitrite concentration shifts. Previously unknown properties of Nitrospira-like bacteria were discovered in the course of an environmental genomics project. Implications of the obtained results for fundamental understanding of the microbial ecology of nitrite oxidizers as well as for future improvement of nutrient removal in wastewater treatment plants are discussed.     

Tracking influent inorganic suspended solids through wastewater treatment plants.

From an experimental and theoretical investigation of the continuity of influent inorganic suspended solids (ISS) along the links connecting the primary settling tank (PST), fully aerobic or N removal activated sludge (AS) and anaerobic and aerobic sludge digestion unit operations, it was found that the influent wastewater (fixed) ISS concentration is conserved through primary sludge anaerobic digestion, activated sludge and aerobic digestion unit operations. However, the measured ISS flux at different stages through a series of wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) unit operations is not equal to the influent ISS flux, because the ordinary heterotrophic organisms (OHO) biomass contributes to the ISS flux by differing amounts depending on the active fraction of the VSS solids at that stage.     

Optimizing the tapping regime on a blast furnace operating at variable speed

The main factors that determine the uniformity with which smelting products are tapped from a blast furnace are the rate of accumulation of the products in the hearth and the tapping rate. The first parameter is in turn determined by the stability of the furnace’s operation and can vary significantly even over the course of 24 h. The second parameter is determined mainly by the condition of the iron notch, the maintenance it receives, any changes that occur in the diameter of the channel of the notch, and the quality of the materials used to form the notch. Recommendations are presented to optimize tapping of the smelting products.     

Word length and lexical activation: Longer is better.

Many models of spoken word recognition posit the existence of lexical and sublexical representations, with excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms used to affect the activation levels of such representations. Bottom-up evidence provides excitatory input, and inhibition from phonetically similar representations leads to lexical competition. In such a system, long words should produce stronger lexical activation than short words, for 2 reasons: Long words provide more bottom-up evidence than short words, and short words are subject to greater inhibition due to the existence of more similar words. Four experiments provide evidence for this view. In addition, reaction-time-based partitioning of the data shows that long words generate greater activation that is available both earlier and for a longer time than is the case for short words. As a result, lexical influences on phoneme identification are extremely robust for long words but are quite fragile and condition-dependent for short words. Models of word recognition must consider words of all lengths to capture the true dynamics of lexical activation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Atomistic simulations of grain boundary migration in copper

While the motion of twist boundaries can be readily studied by atomistic simulations with molecular dynamics (MD) under the action of an elastic driving force, the approach fails for tilt boundaries. This is due to the interaction of the elastic stress with the grain boundary (GB) structure, which causes plastic strain by GB sliding. A novel concept, the orientation correlated driving force, is introduced to circumvent this problem. It is shown that this concept can be successfully applied to the study of the migration of tilt boundaries. The migration behavior of several twist and tilt GBs was investigated. The transition from low-to high-angle boundaries can be captured, and a structural transition of tilt boundaries was found at high temperatures, which also affected the migration behavior. The results compare well with experimental results of the motion high-angle boundaries, but for low-angle boundaries, the agreement is poor. This article is based on a presentation made in the “Hillert Symposium on Thermodynamics & Kinetics of Migrating Interfaces in Steels and Other Complex Alloys,” December 2–3, 2004, organized by The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.     

Reliable eye-diagram analysis of data links via device macromodels

This paper addresses the impact of device macromodels on the accuracy of signal integrity and performance predictions for critical digital interconnecting systems. It exploits nonlinear parametric models for both single-ended and differential devices, including the effects of power supply fluctuations and receiver bit detection. The analysis demonstrates that the use of well-designed macromodels dramatically speeds up the simulation as well it preserves timing accuracy even for long bit sequences.     

Design of a retention tank: comparison of stormwater quality models with various levels of complexity.

Stormwater quality simulation models are useful tools for the design and management of sewer systems. Modelling results are highly sensitive to experimental data used for calibration. This sensitivity is examined for three modelling approaches of various complexities (site mean concentration approach, event mean concentration approach and build-up, washoff and transport modelling approach) applied to a typical case study (design of a dry detention tank), accounting for the variability of calibration data and their effect on simulation results. Calibrated models with different calibration data sets were used to simulate 3 years of rainfall with different retention tank specific volumes. Annual pollutant load interception efficiencies were determined. Simulations results revealed (i) that there is no advantage in using the EMC model compared to the SMC model and (ii) that the BWT model resulted in higher design ratios than those given by the SMC/hydraulic approach. For both EMC and BWT models, using an increasing number n of events for calibration leads to narrower confidence intervals for the design ratios. It is crucial for design ratios to account for successive storm events in chronological order and to account for the maximum allowable flow to be transferred to the downstream WWTP.     

Catalytic epoxidation of olefins in the presence of a vanadyl porphyrin complex

It was found that vanadyl porphyrin complexes synthesized from petroleum metal porphyrin concentrates stimulated epoxidation during the olefin oxygenation process. The yields of obtained oxiranes turned out to be 38–75%, depending on the olefin structure. An epoxidation mechanism that suggests the formation of a protonated dioxygen adduct as an intermediate during oxygenation of olefins in the presence of vanadyl porphyrin complexes was proposed. An analogy is drawn between the epoxide formation reaction upon the catalytic oxygenation of olefins and the Prilezhaev reaction.