Discriminating among educational majors and career aspirations in Taiwanese undergraduates: The contribution of personality and self-efficacy.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the Big Five personality factors, measured by the NEO Personality Inventory Five-Factor Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992), and vocational confidence across Holland's hexagon, measured by the Skills Confidence Inventory (SCI; Betz, Borgen, & Harmon, 2005), were useful in discriminating among educational majors and career aspirations for 312 Taiwanese university students. The Big Five and confidence, in combination, significantly differentiated among 4 college majors and 7 career aspirations in a Taiwanese university sample. Big Five Agreeableness and SCI Realistic, Investigative, and Conventional confidence emerged as most salient in the discrimination. Differences by sex, major, and career aspiration were mostly consistent with social cognitive career theory, Holland's theory, and prior U.S. research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correction to Waller et al. (2006).

Reports an error in "Intramuscular Electrical Stimulation of Facial Muscles in Humans and Chimpanzees: Duchenne Revisited and Extended" by Waller, et al (Emotion, 2006[Aug], Vol 6[3], 367-382). The address provided for the on-line supplemental materials was incorrect. The correct address at which the supplemental materials can be viewed is the following: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/1528-3542.6.3.367.supp (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2006-10747-003.) The pioneering work of Duchenne (1862/1990) was replicated in humans using intramuscular electrical stimulation and extended to another species (Pan troglodytes: chimpanzees) to facilitate comparative facial expression research. Intramuscular electrical stimulation, in contrast to the original surface stimulation, offers the opportunity to activate individual muscles as opposed to groups of muscles. In humans, stimulation resulted in appearance changes in line with Facial Action Coding System (FACS) action units (AUs), and chimpanzee facial musculature displayed functional similarity to human facial musculature. The present results provide objective identification of the muscle substrate of human and chimpanzee facial expressions- data that will be useful in providing a common language to compare the units of human and chimpanzee facial expression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characteristics of Air Force personnel who choose pharmacological aids for smoking cessation following an involuntary tobacco ban and tobacco control program.

Objective: The objective of this study was to compare characteristics of smokers who did and did not report use of cessation aids as part of a tobacco control program in a military setting (n = 8994). Design: The study is a longitudinal epidemiological study where the relationship between smoking status at follow-up and use of pharmacologic aids to quit smoking were assessed. Main Outcome Measures: Smoking cessation, post baseline use of cessation aids to quit smoking. Results and Conclusions: Individuals remaining abstinent were 70% less likely to have used NRT/pharmacological aids compared to those that relapsed. NRT/pharmacological aid users were more likely to report plans to smoke after military training, to have friends who smoke, and to accept a cigarette from a friend. NRT/pharmacological aid users were more likely to believe that using NRT was safer than smoking and to have engaged in harm reduction strategies. Our findings suggest that selection bias related to such characteristics may explain some of the discrepancies between effect sizes reported in efficacy compared to effectiveness studies of NRT and smoking outcomes currently reported in the literature. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rate-adaptive weighted fair queueing for energy-aware scheduling

In this paper we study energy-aware scheduling that trades energy consumption against a traditional performance measure of delay. We use the power-rate function f(x)=c+x^α$f(x)=c+x^{\alpha }$ for x>0$x>0$ and f(0)=0$f(0)=0$ to model the power consumption, where c>0$c>0$ represents the base power. We give a definition of a rate-adaptive version of the Weighted Fair Queueing scheduling algorithm, and prove its energy consumption is within a bounded factor of the best possible when the algorithm guarantees the classic end-to-end delay for every connection.     

Measuring the impact of a blended learning model on early literacy growth

In the context of trying to improve reading proficiency in elementary school students, this study investigated the use of digital technology as part of a blended learning program, Core5, in kindergarten and first grade classes. A quasi-experimental design compared 283 treatment students instructed in schools using Core5 with 237 control students in schools using traditional instruction in an urban school district. At the beginning of the school year, all students were pretested with Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (DIBELS), a commonly used reading assessment. During the school year, the treatment schools implemented Core5, which includes the online component and offline teacher-led lessons. The English Language Arts curriculum was evaluated and found to be similar across treatment and control schools. At the end of the school year, all students were post-tested with DIBELS. Results from propensity score analyses showed that treatment students outperformed control students and that the discrepancy between treatment and control groups on post-test scores was more pronounced when students had lower pretest scores. These outcomes point to the value of using Core5 for reading instruction in early elementary grades.     

Exact learning of DNF formulas using DNF hypotheses

We show the following: (a) For any ε>0, log^(3+ε)n-term DNF cannot be polynomial-query learned with membership and strongly proper equivalence queries. (b) For sufficiently large t, t-term DNF formulas cannot be polynomial-query learned with membership and equivalence queries that use t^1+ε-term DNF formulas as hypotheses, for some ε<1 (c) Read-thrice DNF formulas are not polynomial-query learnable with membership and proper equivalence queries. (d) logn-term DNF formulas can be polynomial-query learned with membership and proper equivalence queries. (This complements a result of Bshouty, Goldman, Hancock, and Matar that -term DNF can be so learned in polynomial time.)Versions of (a)-(c) were known previously, but the previous versions applied to polynomial-time learning and used complexity theoretic assumptions. In contrast, (a)-(c) apply to polynomial-query learning, imply the results for polynomial-time learning, and do not use any complexity-theoretic assumptions.     

Instance-based automaticity and aging: Acquisition, reacquisition, and long-term retention.

This research examined age differences in the acquisition and reacquisition of instance-based automaticity. In 2 experiments, young and older adults were trained to enumerate targets presented in otherwise empty displays or in displays that contained distractors. Experiment 1 revealed that older adults required more practice to reach asymptote than young adults. For both age groups, modifications of the identities and locations of targets produced substantial disruptions in performance, whereas modifications of the identities or locations of distractors produced little interference. However, no age differences in the representations of instances in memory were obtained in participants who reached asymptote. Experiment 2 revealed age deficits in the long-term retention and rate of reacquisition of instance-based automaticity 18 months after initial training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Validation of mutual information-based registration of CT and bone SPECT images in dual-isotope studies

The registration of computed tomography (CT) and nuclear medicine (NM) images can substantially enhance patient diagnosis as it allows for the fusion of anatomical and functional information, as well as the attenuation correction of NM images. However, irrespective of the method used, registration accuracy depends heavily on the characteristics of the images that are registered and the degree of similarity between them. This poses a challenge for registering CT and NM images as they have very different characteristics and content. To address the particular problem of registering single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) oncology studies with corresponding CT, we have proposed to perform a dual-isotope study with simultaneous injection of a tumor tracer and a bone imaging agent to obtain a tumor SPECT and a bone SPECT image that are inherently registered. As bone structures are generally visible in both CT and bone SPECT, performing registration of these images will be more easily attainable than registration of CT and tumor SPECT. By subsequently applying the spatial transformation determined from this registration to the tumor SPECT acquired from the same dual-isotope study, the optimal alignment between the CT and tumor SPECT images can be obtained. In this paper, we present the proof-of-concept of the proposed approach, the MI-based algorithm employed, and the techniques used to select the algorithm's parameters. Our objectives are to show the feasibility of CT and bone SPECT registration using this algorithm and to validate quantitatively the results generated using clinical data.     

Subjective and behavioral presence measurement and interactivity in the collaborative augmented reality game TimeWarp

Presence is usually assessed via a variety of subjective and objective measures. However, constraints often result in subjective measurements using questionnaires as a key method of data collection. In this paper we present a study of 44 participants of a collaborative augmented reality game known as TimeWarp which used both subjective and objective behavioral measures. Behavior as coded from video recordings of one scene of the game and self-reports about feelings of presence were compared. Our findings indicate that pointing behavior and verbal responses to the virtual content are correlated negatively to sense of presence. We further investigated the influence of subjectively perceived interactivity on perceived presence. We found that the interaction possibilities perceived by the participants predicted their experience of social presence with the virtual characters in the game. Furthermore, playing together with another person did not result in decreased social presence of the virtual characters. Implications for presence research are discussed.     

Implementing sequentially consistent programs on processor consistent platforms

Designers of distributed algorithms typically assume strong memory consistency guarantees, but system implementations provide weaker guarantees for better performance and scalability. This motivates the study of how to implement programs designed for sequential consistency on platforms with weaker consistency models. Typically, such implementations are impossible using only read and write operations to shared variables. One variant of processor consistency originally proposed by Goodman and called here PC-G is an exception because it provides just enough consistency to implement mutual exclusion using only reads and writes. This paper investigates the existence of compilers to convert arbitrary programs that use shared read/write variables with sequentially consistent memory semantics, to programs that use read/write variables with PC-G consistency semantics. We first provide a simple program transformation, and prove that it correctly compiles any 2-process program to a PC-G memory system, while preserving wait-freedom. We next prove that even a substantial generalization of this transformation cannot be a compiler for even a very restricted class of 3-process programs. Even though our program transformation is not a general compiler for three or more processes, it does correctly transform some specific n-process programs. In particular, for the special case of the (necessarily randomized) Test&Set algorithm of Tromp and Vitanyi, our transformation extends to any number of processes, thus providing the first algorithm for expected wait-free Test&Set on any weak memory system, using only read/write variables.