Application of the Strain Index in multiple task jobs

Six different methods to calculate the Strain Index (SI) scores for jobs with multiple forces/tasks were developed. Exposure data of 733 subjects from 12 different worksites were used to calculate these SI scores. Results show that using different SI computation methods could result in different SI scores, hence different risk level classifications. However, some simpler methods generated SI scores were comparable to the more complicated composite SI method. Despite differences in the scores between the six different SI computation methods, Spearman rank-order correlation coefficients of 0.61-0.97 were found between the methods. With some confidence, ergonomic practitioners may use simpler methods, depending on their specificity requirement in job evaluations and available resources. Some SI computation methods may tend to over-estimate job risk levels, while others may tend to under-estimate job risk levels, due to different ways used in obtaining the various SI parameters and computations.     

Designing wrapper components for e-services in integrating heterogeneous systems

Component-based approaches are becoming more and more popular to support Internet-based application development. Different component modeling approaches, however, can be adopted, obtaining different abstraction levels (either conceptual or operational). In this paper we present a component-based architecture for the design of e-applications, and discuss the concept of wrapper components as building blocks for the development of e-services, where these services are based on legacy systems. We discuss their characteristics and their applicability in Internet-based application development. Received: 30 October 2000 / Accepted: 9 January 2001 Published online: 28 June 2001     

Trusted Computing Platform Alliance

An industry consortium focused on ensuring that all PCs are secure for electronic business transactions has announced the release of its first version specification. The Trusted Computing Platform Alliance (TCPA), backed by founding members Compaq, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Intel, said that the specification will adopt the combination of a hardware and a software approach, which includes a security chip that encrypts data whether filed locally, or sent over the Internet by E-mail.     

Exploring the Interaction between Java's Implicitly Thrown Exceptions and Instruction Scheduling

The frequent occurrence of implicitly thrown exceptions poses one of the challenges present in a Java compiler. Not only do these implicitly thrown exceptions directly affect the performance by requiring explicit checks, they also indirectly impact the performance by restricting code movement in order to satisfy the precise exception model in Java. In particular, instruction scheduling is one transformation that is restricted by implicitly thrown exceptions due to the heavy reliance on reordering instructions to exploit maximum hardware performance. The goal of this study is two-fold: first, investigate the degree to which implicitly thrown exceptions in Java hinder instruction scheduling, and second, find new techniques for allowing more efficient execution of Java programs containing implicitly thrown exceptions. Experimental results show that with aggressive scheduling techniques, such as superblock scheduling, the negative performance impact can be greatly reduced.     

Using digital technologies to redress inequities for English language learners in the English speaking mathematics classroom

This study examined the question, ‘What is the impact of a digital math intervention on secondary ELL students’ mathematical capabilities and perceptions of their future possibilities?’ The hypothesis was that through its direct effect on increasing students’ math ability and its indirect effect on increasing students’ perceived math self-efficacy, the digital intervention affects students’ perceptions of their functionings and future possibilities. A path analysis, with qualitative data nested into the design, was used to analyze the conceptualized relationships. The study was conducted with 50 ninth-and-10th-grade Hispanic students in a Colorado high school, over 6 months. The primary finding was that through its direct effect on increasing students’ math ability and its indirect effect on increasing students’ perceived math self-efficacy, the digital intervention improved students’ perceptions of their functionings and future possibilities. What this study specifically underscores is the importance of taking a coherent and purposeful approach toward the design of digital student-directed educational technology, especially for ELL students who may have specific learning needs.     

Differential Fos Expression Following Aspiration, Electrolytic, or Excitotoxic Lesions of the Perirhinal Cortex in Rats.

The authors explored the possibility that there are different neural consequences, beyond the primary site of brain damage, following perirhinal cortex (PRh) lesions made in different ways. Fos expression was used as a marker for neuronal activation and compared across the forebrains of rats that underwent the different types of surgery. Electrolytic and excitotoxic PRh lesions produced dramatic increases in Fos expression in the cortex, and excitotoxic and aspiration PRh lesions increased Fos expression in the dentate gyrus. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that different lesion methods have separable effects on neural function in regions outside the lesion site that could account for inconsistencies in the literature regarding the behavioral effects of PRh lesions on tests of spatial memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessment and Early Instruction of Preschool Children at Risk for Reading Disability.

Preschool children at familial risk for reading disability were assessed on cognitive and linguistic variables and compared with preschoolers without familial risk. Risk children displayed performance profiles resembling those of older children with reading disability. Each group received intensive instruction in phonemic awareness and structured book reading. Instructed risk children made somewhat smaller gains than the nonrisk and required more teaching sessions to reach criterion. Rhyme and phoneme awareness predicted instruction outcome levels, and vocabulary and verbal short-term memory predicted number of teaching sessions to criterion. In kindergarten, the nonrisk group outperformed the risk group on reading and spelling, although the risk group reached grade-appropriate levels. At-risk children can be helped by appropriate preschool instruction, but they require more sustained teaching than nonrisk preschoolers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Weighted thin-plate spline image denoising

This note aims to present new denoising method based on thin-plate splines (TPS). The proposed approach is based on the general TPS denoising Berman [2], however, its unfavorable smoothing of edges and details is suppressed by introduction of a weighting approach applied locally. The performance of the method is shown and compared to the original TPS denoising.     

Alcoholics Anonymous and Relapse Prevention as Maintenance Strategies After Conjoint Behavioral Alcohol Treatment for Men: 18-Month Outcomes.

Ninety men with alcohol problems and their female partners were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 outpatient conjoint treatments: alcohol behavioral couples therapy (ABCT), ABCT with relapse prevention techniques (RP/ABCT), or ABCT with interventions encouraging Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) involvement (AA/ABCT). Couples were followed for 18 months after treatment. Across the 3 treatments, drinkers who provided follow-up data maintained abstinence on almost 80% of days during follow-up, with no differences in drinking or marital happiness outcomes between groups. AA/ABCT participants attended AA meetings more often than ABCT or RP/ABCT participants, and their drinking outcomes were more strongly related to concurrent AA attendance. For the entire sample, AA attendance was positively related to abstinence during follow-up in both concurrent and time-lagged analyses. In the RP/ABCT treatment, attendance at posttreatment booster sessions was related to posttreatment abstinence. Across treatment conditions, marital happiness was related positively to abstinence in concurrent but not time-lagged analyses. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Empirical study of the dynamic behavior of JavaScript objects

Despite the popularity of JavaScript for client‐side web applications, there is a lack of effective software tools supporting JavaScript development and testing. The dynamic characteristics of JavaScript pose software engineering challenges such as program understanding and security. One important feature of JavaScript is that its objects support flexible mechanisms such as property changes at runtime and prototype‐based inheritance, making it difficult to reason about object behavior. We have performed an empirical study on real JavaScript applications to understand the dynamic behavior of JavaScript objects. We present metrics to measure behavior of JavaScript objects during execution (e.g., operations associated with an object, object size, and property type changes). We also investigated the behavioral patterns of observed objects to understand the coding or user interaction practices in JavaScript software. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.