Retracted: Dual Effects of Nanostructuring and Oxygen Vacancy on Photoelectrochemical Water Oxidation Activity of Superstructured and Defective Hematite Nanorods

An Ar atmospheric treatment is rationally used to etch and activate hematite nanoflakes (NFs) as photoanodes toward enhanced photoelectrochemical water oxidation. The formation of a highly ordered hematite nanorods (NRs) array containing a high density of oxygen vacancy is successfully prepared through in situ reduction of NFs in Ar atmosphere. Furthermore, a hematite (104) plane and an iron suboxide layer at the absorber/back‐contact interface are formed. The material defects produced by a thermal oxidation method can be critical for the morphology transformation from 2D NFs to 1D NRs. The resulting hematite NR photoanodes show high efficiency toward solar water splitting with improved light harvesting capabilities, leading to an enhanced photoresponse due to the artificially formed oxygen vacancies.     

Measurement and analysis of low-acceleration and long-duration longitudinal events using delivery van

This study investigates longitudinal acceleration events during freight transportation characterized as low-acceleration and long-duration using delivery van type vehicles. In the past several decades, there has been an increase in shipments requiring only single or small pallet load quantities and mixed palletized unit loads comprised of different goods. These loads are often transported in delivery vans without load securing devices, increasing the risk of product loss and damage due to load failures resulting from unit loads shifting. A field data acquisition system was used to observe and record the random acceleration events from five vehicles for 5 days, explicitly targeting the vehicles' braking and acceleration manoeuvres. The study aimed to understand the physical phenomenon and provide new information that can be used during preshipment tests to prevent damage to goods and ensure unit load integrity is maintained throughout the supply chain. The events were statistically analysed to understand their probability of occurrence, severity level, and quantify critical parameters such as event rise and hold times. For the braking manoeuvre, the statistical mean of average deceleration was 0.25 g with a corresponding rise and hold duration of 0.83 and 1.27 s, respectively. During the vehicle's acceleration manoeuvre, the statistical mean of average acceleration was 0.29 g with a rise and hold time of 1.29 and 1.39 s, respectively. Utilizing the field data, composite profiles were developed, and these profiles were compared to the currently available test procedures and previous results of other studies.     

Comparison of paper-and-pencil versus Web administration of the Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS): Participation,data quality,and perceived privacy and anonymity

The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) monitors priority health-risk behaviors among US high school students. To better understand the ramifications of changing the YRBSS from paper-and-pencil to Web administration, in 2008 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention conducted a study comparing these two modes of administration. Eighty-five schools in 15 states agreed to participate in the study. Within each participating school, four classrooms of students in grades 9 or 10 were randomly assigned to complete the Youth Risk Behavior Survey questionnaire in one of four conditions (in-class paper-and-pencil, in-class Web without programmed skip patterns, in-class Web with programmed skip patterns, and “on your own” Web without programmed skip patterns). Findings included less missing data for the paper-and-pencil condition (1.5% vs. 5.3%, 4.4%, 6.4%; p < .001), less perceived privacy and anonymity among respondents for the in-class Web conditions, and a lower response rate for the “on your own” Web condition than for in-class administration by either mode (28.0% vs. 91.2%, 90.1%, 91.4%; p < .001). Although Web administration might be useful for some surveys, these findings do not favor the use of a Web survey for the YRBSS.     

ManiWordle: providing flexible control over Wordle

Among the multifarious tag-clouding techniques, Wordle stands out to the community by providing an aesthetic layout, eliciting the emergence of the participatory culture and usage of tag-clouding in the artistic creations. In this paper, we introduce ManiWordle, a Wordle-based visualization tool that revamps interactions with the layout by supporting custom manipulations. ManiWordle allows people to manipulate typography, color, and composition not only for the layout as a whole, but also for the individual words, enabling them to have better control over the layout result. We first describe our design rationale along with the interaction techniques for tweaking the layout. We then present the results both from the preliminary usability study and from the comparative study between ManiWordle and Wordle. The results suggest that ManiWordle provides higher user satisfaction and an efficient method of creating the desired "art work," harnessing the power behind the ever-increasing popularity of Wordle.     

Toward large-scale Hybrid Monte Carlo simulations of the Hubbard model on graphics processing units

One of the most efficient non-perturbative methods for the calculation of thermal properties of quantum systems is the Hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm, as evidenced by its use in large-scale lattice quantum chromodynamics calculations. The performance of this algorithm is determined by the speed at which the fermion operator is applied to a given vector, as it is the central operation in the preconditioned conjugate gradient iteration. We study a simple implementation of these operations for the fermion matrix of the Hubbard model in d+1 spacetime dimensions, and report a performance comparison between a 2.66 GHz Intel Xeon E5430 CPU and an NVIDIA Tesla C1060 GPU using double-precision arithmetic. We find speedup factors ranging between 30 and 350 for d=1, and in excess of 40 for d=3. We argue that such speedups are of considerable impact for large-scale simulational studies of quantum many-body systems.     

When does visual attention select all features of a distractor?

What happens after visual attention is allocated to an object? Although many theories of attention assume that all of its features are selected and processed, there has been little direct evidence that an irrelevant feature dimension of an attended nontarget is processed. In 5 experiments presented here, the authors used a singleton paradigm to investigate the effect of attention on nontarget objects. Participants made a speeded feature discrimination of a target for which the response was either compatible or incompatible with an irrelevant feature dimension of a distractor. The results show that the irrelevant distractor features were processed to the point that they interfered with the response to the target. The response compatibility effect was observed even when the location of the target or the distractor was invariant, although it was much weaker when both locations were invariant. These results demonstrate that in many circumstances, an attended distractor is completely selected and fully processed, and the complete processing of distractors depends on a number of factors, many of which are related to the strength of attention to the distractor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reach and posture hand preferences during arboreal feeding in sifakas (Propithecus sp.): A test of the postural origins theory of behavioral lateralization.

Sixteen sifakas (11 Propithecus verreauxi coquereli, 2 Propithecus verreauxi verreauxi form majori, and 3 Propithecus tattersalli) were videotaped as they fed on leaves in an arboreal context. The hand used to feed and the hand used to maintain postural stability was coded. For each subject, the lateral bias of the hand used to feed was opposite the hand used in postural support. Seven sifakas displayed no bias for feeding or posture-related hand use, 7 sifakas displayed significant feeding-related reach preferences for pulling branches to the mouth (5 left- and 2 right-hand preferences), and 9 sifakas exhibited significant hand preferences for postural support (2 left-, 7 right-hand preferent). Although these data do not strongly support the postural origins theory of behavioral lateralization, the modal preference pattern for sifakas that displayed significant hand preferences for posture and feeding involve a left bias for feeding and a right bias for postural support. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Satellite radar remote sensing of seasonal growing seasons for boreal and subalpine evergreen forests

We evaluated whether satellite radar remote sensing of landscape seasonal freeze-thaw cycles provides an effective measure of active growing season timing and duration for boreal and subalpine evergreen forests. Landscape daily radar backscatter measurements from the SeaWinds scatterometer on-board the QuikSCAT satellite were evaluated across a regional network of North American coniferous forest sites for 2000 and 2001. Radar remote sensing measurements of the initiation and length of the growing season corresponded closely with both site measurements and ecosystem process model (BIOME-BGC) simulations of these parameters because of the sensitivity of the K_u-band scatterometer to snow cover freeze-thaw dynamics and associated linkages between growing season initiation and the timing of seasonal snowmelt. In contrast, remote sensing estimates of the timing of growing season termination were either weakly or not significantly associated with site measurements and model simulation results, due to the relative importance of light availability and other environmental controls on stand phenology in the fall. Regional patterns of estimated annual net primary production (NPP) and component photosynthetic and autotrophic respiration rates for the evergreen forest sites also corresponded favorably with remote sensing estimates of the seasonal timing of spring thaw and associated growing season length, indicating the importance of these parameters in determining spatial and temporal patterns of NPP and the potential utility of satellite radar remote sensing for regional monitoring of the terrestrial biosphere.