The Morning After: Limit Violations and the Self-Regulation of Alcohol Consumption.

The authors examined whether the reciprocal relationship between alcohol consumption and distress unfolded over time in 2 samples of social drinkers. Participants monitored their alcohol intake and their cognitive and emotional responses to that drinking on hand-held computers. On mornings after drinking, those who had violated their self-imposed limits the day before reported more guilt, even after controlling for acute negative symptoms of drinking and amount consumed. Reciprocally, guilt led to poorer self-regulation of alcohol intake: Greater distress over alcohol consumption was linked to more intake, intoxication, and more limit violations. Individual differences moderated the relationships among limit violations, distress, and drinking. Consistent with the limit violation effect, violating a limit produced distress over consumption among social drinkers, and they responded to that distress by drinking more. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fuzzy PI control design for an industrial weigh belt feeder

An industrial weigh belt feeder is used to transport solid materials into a manufacturing process at a constant feedrate. It exhibits nonlinear behavior because of motor friction, saturation, and quantization noise in the sensors, which makes standard autotuning methods difficult to implement. The paper proposes and experimentally demonstrates two types of fuzzy logic controllers for an industrial weigh belt feeder. The first type is a PI-like fuzzy logic controller (FLC). A gain scheduled PI-like FLC and a self-tuning PI-like FLC are presented. For the gain scheduled PI-like FLC the output scaling factor of the controller is gain scheduled with the change of setpoint. For the self-tuning PI-like FLC, the output scaling factor of the controller is modified online by an updating factor whose value is determined by a rule base with the error and change of error of the controlled variable as the inputs. A fuzzy PI controller is also presented, where the proportional and integral gains are tuned online based on fuzzy inference rules. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed fuzzy logic controllers. A performance comparison of the three controllers is also given.     

The Challenges of Cross-Modal Translation: English-to-Sign-Language Translation in the Zardoz System

The sign languages used by deaf communities around the world represent a linguistic challenge that natural-language researchers in AI have only recently begun to take up. This challenge is particularly relevant to research in Machine Translation (MT), as natural sign languages have evolved in deaf communities into efficient modes of gestural communication, which differ from English not only in modality but in grammatical structure, exploiting a higher dimensionality of spatial expression. In this paper we describe Zardoz, an on-going AI research system that tackles the cross-modal MT problem, translating English text into fluid sign language. The paper presents an architectural overview of Zardoz, describing its central blackboard organization, the nature of its interlingual representation, and the major components which interact through this blackboard both to analyze the verbal input and generate the corresponding gestural output in one of a number of sign variants.     

Single-factor coefficient bounds

In a 1993 paper Beauzamy, Trevisan and Wang derived a single-factor coefficient bound, one which limits the max norm (height) of at least one irreducible factor of any univariate integral polynomial A. Their bound is a function of the degree and the weighted norm of A. In the conclusion of their paper they ask whether the max norm of A might already be a single-factor coefficient bound. In 1998 Knuth, citing these authors, asked instead whether there is a constant c such that c times the max norm of A is a single-factor coefficient bound. We present the results of extensive calculations relating to this question. We show that c, if it exists, must be greater than 2 and accrue evidence in support of a conjecture that the answer to Knuth’s question is “no”.     

Do problematic and non-problematic video game players differ in extraversion,trait empathy,social capital and prosocial tendencies?

The increasing popularity of online and multiplayer games has meant that for many, social interaction and cooperation are vital components of the gaming experience. Previous research has suggested that not only has this made gaming more attractive to socially oriented people but also that it may be socially beneficial in terms of social capital and prosocial behaviors. However, for problematic video game players (those showing signs of compulsive or detrimental video game use), this may not be the case, and a number of theories hold deficiencies in socializing in real life as central to the development of this issue. In the present study, an online questionnaire completed by 416 participants assessed problematic video game use, extraversion, trait empathy, online and offline social capital and prosocial tendencies. Contrary to hypotheses, non-problematic, problematic and non-gamers did not differ in empathy, extraversion or prosocial tendencies. Problematic video game play was, however, associated with significantly higher online social capital and lower offline social capital whereas non-problematic players demonstrated only higher online capital than non-players. This highlights the importance of social support but suggests personality is not an influential factor.     

Parallel operation of CartaBlanca on shared and distributed memory computers

We describe the parallel performance of the pure Java CartaBlanca code on heat transfer and multiphase fluid flow problems. CartaBlanca is designed for parallel computations on partitioned unstructured meshes. It uses Java's thread facility to manage computations on each of the mesh partitions. Inter‐partition communications are handled by two compact objects for node‐by‐node communication along partition boundaries and for global reduction calculations across the entire mesh. For distributed calculations, the JavaParty package from the University of Karlsruhe is demonstrated to work with CartaBlanca. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Short communication: Heritability estimates for susceptibility to Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis infection defined by ELISA and fecal culture test results in Jersey cattle

Paratuberculosis (Johne’s disease), an enteric disorder in ruminants caused by Mycobacterium avium ssp. paratuberculosis, causes economic losses in excess of $200 million annually to the US dairy industry. Costly diagnostic testing, cumbersome control programs, incurability, and ineffective vaccination all make M. avium ssp. paratuberculosis susceptibility a good candidate for genetic studies and genetic selection a potentially useful adjunct to management-based control programs. No report has been published for heritability of susceptibility to M. avium ssp. paratuberculosis infection in Jersey cattle. The objective of this study was to estimate variance components and heritability for susceptibility to M. avium ssp. paratuberculosis infection in US Jersey cattle. Data consisted of complete serum ELISA and partial fecal culture results on a total of 2,861 Jersey cows from 23 commercial herds throughout the United States after editing. Four M. avium ssp. paratuberculosis susceptibility phenotypes were defined using (1) ELISA sample-to-positive ratios as a continuous trait, (2) ELISA results as a binary trait (positive = 1, negative = 0), (3) ELISA results as an ordered categorical trait, and (4) a combined test in which ELISA and fecal culture results were both taken into account in a binary analysis. Three statistical models, including linear, binary threshold, and ordered threshold sire models, were used to analyze the data. All analyses were executed using the restricted maximum likelihood method in ASReml 3 software. The heritability estimates were low to moderate and ranged from 0.08 (±0.03) to 0.27 (±0.11) based on different trait definitions. The nonzero heritability indicates that susceptibility to M. avium ssp. paratuberculosis infection in Jersey cattle is influenced by genetic factors. Therefore, selection of the least susceptible animals could decrease genetic predisposition to M. avium ssp. paratuberculosis infection in Jersey populations in future generations.     

Spatio-temporal analysis of trap catches of Tribolium confusum du Val in a semolina-mill, with a comparison of female and male distributions

By using food-bait traps, we evaluated the presence and the spatio-temporal distribution of insect pests in an industrial semolina-mill, with particular attention to Tribolium confusum du Val in which the spatio-temporal dynamics of females and males were also studied separately. A total of 1401 insect specimens was captured in the traps, belonging to 14 taxa, mainly Coleoptera. The most abundant species were T. confusum (with 1002 adults), followed by Typhaea stercorea (L.) (with 158 adults) and T. castaneum (Herbst) (with 110 adults). Of particular interest was the presence in the food-bait traps of T. confusum and T. castaneum adults in a mixed population with equal numbers of males and females. Furthermore, analysis of the spatio-temporal dynamics suggested that the distribution of the two sexes in T. confusum was almost the same during the entire sampling period. The findings of our study can usefully be applied to the management of Tribolium infestations, but further and more detailed studies are needed to better understand the ecology and behaviour of the species in association with searching for food and production of aggregation pheromones.