Grouped comparisons of sleep quality for new and personal bedding systems

The purpose of this study was to compare sleep comfort and quality between personal and new bedding systems. A convenience sample (women, n=33; men, n=29) with no clinical history of disturbed sleep participated in the study. Subjects recorded back and shoulder pain, sleep quality, comfort, and efficiency for 28 days each in their personal beds (pre) and in new medium-firm bedding systems (post). Repeated measures ANOVAs revealed significant improvement between pre- and post-test means for all dependent variables. Furthermore, reduction of pain and stiffness and improvement of sleep comfort and quality became more prominent over time. No significant differences were found for the groupings of age, weight, height, or body mass index. It was found that for the cheapest category of beds, lower back pain was significantly (p<0.01) more prominent than for the medium and higher priced beds. Average bed age was 9.5yrs. It was concluded that new bedding systems can significantly improve selected sleep variables and that continuous sleep quality may be dependent on timely replacement of bedding systems.     

Unsupervised named-entity extraction from the Web: An experimental study

The KnowItAll system aims to automate the tedious process of extracting large collections of facts (e.g., names of scientists or politicians) from the Web in an unsupervised, domain-independent, and scalable manner. The paper presents an overview of KnowItAll's novel architecture and design principles, emphasizing its distinctive ability to extract information without any hand-labeled training examples. In its first major run, KnowItAll extracted over 50,000 class instances, but suggested a challenge: How can we improve KnowItAll's recall and extraction rate without sacrificing precision?This paper presents three distinct ways to address this challenge and evaluates their performance. Pattern Learning learns domain-specific extraction rules, which enable additional extractions. Subclass Extraction automatically identifies sub-classes in order to boost recall (e.g., “chemist” and “biologist” are identified as sub-classes of “scientist”). List Extraction locates lists of class instances, learns a “wrapper” for each list, and extracts elements of each list. Since each method bootstraps from KnowItAll's domain-independent methods, the methods also obviate hand-labeled training examples. The paper reports on experiments, focused on building lists of named entities, that measure the relative efficacy of each method and demonstrate their synergy. In concert, our methods gave KnowItAll a 4-fold to 8-fold increase in recall at precision of 0.90, and discovered over 10,000 cities missing from the Tipster Gazetteer.     

用于无线通信的多内核DSP

无线通信产业不断推进创新,像WiMAX、MIMO和4G都需要增强的性能.无线系统开发商面临在更短的开发周期和更少的财政投入情况下提供非常复杂的系统.在这种压力下,目前业界正在突破无线系统采用ASIC、DSP和FPGA的传统构建方法.多内核DSP兼具FPGA的扩展特性和阵列优点,以及DSP的相似性和效率,提供了一种比DSP和FPGA更高效、更易于开发的解决方案.     

2M/T1 Testing: Ensuring That Your Data Makes It Across The Interface

Service providers and end users need to be sure that a 2M/T1 network is synchronized and timed correctly.     

Assignment allocation and simulated annealing algorithms for cell formation

In this paper a nonlinear mathematical programming model is developed for cell formation that identifies part families and machine groups simultaneously with no manual intervention or subjective judgement. The objective of the model is minimization of the weighted sum of the voids and the exceptional elements. Changing weights for void and exceptional elements aids the designer with a systematic generation of different solutions, i.e., forming large loose cells or small tight cells. An assignment allocation algorithm (AAA) and a simulated annealing algorithm (SAA) are developed to solve the model. AAA and SAA compare favorably with many well-known procedures for the problems tested. AAA is less computer-intensive and hence large problems with 400 parts and 240 machines were solved with AAA in less than a minute on Sun Sparc station. However, AAA is sensitive to the initial machine grouping solution input to the algorithm. SAA gives consistent results but requires more computational time.     

Representing scientific data sets in KML: Methods and challenges

Virtual Globes such as Google Earth and NASA World Wind permit users to explore rich imagery and the topography of the Earth. While other online services such as map servers provide ways to view, query, and download geographic information, the public has become captivated with the ability to view the Earth’s features virtually. The National Snow and Ice Data Center began to display scientific data on Virtual Globes in 2006. The work continues to evolve with the production of high-quality Keyhole Markup Language (KML) representations of scientific data and an assortment of technical experiments. KML files are interoperable with many Virtual Globe or mapping software packages. This paper discusses the science benefits of Virtual Globes, summarizes KML creation methods, and introduces a guide for selecting tools and methods for authoring KML for use with scientific data sets.     

异步片上网络研究综述

异步片上网络具有低动态功耗、对延迟抖动的不敏感、统一的网络接口、较低的系统集成复杂度和较好的电磁兼容能力等众多特性,是下一代片上多核微处理器和多核片上系统的标准片上通信架构之一.在简单介绍异步电路的相关理论后,从多个方面概述了当前异步片上网络的研究成果,包括网络拓扑、同步?异步接口、流控制、服务质量、路由算法、低功耗设计、容错和可测性设计以及设计自动化;然后介绍并分析了一些具有代表性的异步片上网络设计案例.研究显示,异步片上网络具有众多同步片上网络所不具备的优点,大量的片上多核系统将使用异步片上网络作为其片上通信系统,但它们的易用性和网络性能亟待提高.     

Implementing a graphical multi-user interface toolkit

Multi-user applications allows users in different locations to simultaneously interact with a common interface. Creating multi-user applications is complicated by issues such as process synchronization, replicated window management, and floor control. As a result, several papers describing toolkits that simplify programming of multi-user applications have appeared in the literature. This paper discusses several low-level issues that must be addressed when implementing such a toolkit. Issues relating to replicated window management, supporting heterogeneous hardware environments, and multi-user event handling are discussed.     

Combined cognitive behavioral therapy and bupropion for the treatment of problematic on-line game play in adolescents with major depressive disorder

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the efficacy of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) in combination with bupropion for treatment of problematic on-line game play in adolescents with co-morbid major depressive disorder. Sixty-five depressed adolescents with excessive on-line game play were randomly assigned to a CBT group (CBT-Med group (N = 32)) or a clinical control group (Med group (N = 33)). Measures of severity of internet use, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, life satisfaction and school adaptation were assessed at baseline, after the 8 week intervention, and at the end of a 4 week follow-up post-treatment period. Young Internet Addiction Scale scores in the CBT-Med group were reduced compared to those of the Med group, but there was no significant difference in the change of depression scores between two groups. The mean anxiety scores in the CBT-Med group did not change while those in the Med group were increased. The mean life satisfaction scores in the CBT-Med group were increased compared to those of the Med group. CBT in combination with bupropion may be effective for the treatment of depressed adolescents with on-line game addiction, particularly in reducing on-line game play and anxiety, as well as in improving life satisfaction.