ONTRACK: Dynamically adapting music playback to support navigation

Listening to music on personal, digital devices whilst mobile is an enjoyable, everyday activity. We explore a scheme for exploiting this practice to immerse listeners in navigation cues. Our prototype, ONTRACK, continuously adapts audio, modifying the spatial balance and volume to lead listeners to their target destination. First we report on an initial lab-based evaluation that demonstrated the approach’s efficacy: users were able to complete tasks within a reasonable time and their subjective feedback was positive. Encouraged by these results we constructed a handheld prototype. Here, we discuss this implementation and the results of field-trials. These indicate that even with a low-fidelity realisation of the concept, users can quite effectively navigate complicated routes.

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Promoting positive relations between parents and child--a counseling service for families with infants and young children in Sydney

The "Early Intervention Programme" (EIP) in Sydney, Australia, is a home-based service for distressed families with children 0-3 years of age. It is funded as a child abuse prevention unit. The concept is based on the work of Selma Fraiberg (1980), who developed the first infant mental health program in Michigan, USA. The goal of the EIP is to strengthen the relationship between parents and child through developmental guidance, psychotherapy and/or provision of active help. The child is seen as an important partner in the intervention process.     

"Indianism" and MMPI scores of men alcoholics

Mean MMPI profiles of 40 Indian and 40 White veterans were similar, but "Indianism," as measured by the Indian Culturalization Test, was significantly related to scores on Hs, Hy, Pt and Sc scales. Caution is advised in using the MMPI in the diagnosis of Indians' psychiatric problems.     

Robust tracking control of an array of nanoparticles moving on a substrate

Control of nanosystems with frictional dynamics using feedback control methods is important to a wide range of applications of nanotribology. This paper studies the tracking control problem of an array of nanoparticles moving on a substrate with friction between the substrate and the particles. The focus of this study is on control design and stability analysis. The major challenges in this problem include nonlinearities and uncertainties in the frictional dynamics and limited availability of measurable states in nanosystems. The particle–substrate interaction is considered to be unknown, and the unknown effect of unmodeled particle dynamics on the dynamics of the center of mass of the array is also considered. A nonlinear identifier is first developed to identify these unmodeled dynamics. A feedback controller is then developed based on the identifier to control the center of mass of the particles to track a desired trajectory. Boundedness of the closed-loop states and semiglobal asymptotic stability of the tracking error are proven using Lyapunov theory for the case of linear inter-particle interactions. An example with more general Morse-type inter-particle interactions is included to provide some level of confidence that the results are general but not assuredness that they are. Numerical simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the developed identification and control law.     

Personalcasting: Tailored Broadcast News

Broadcast news sources and newspapers provide society with the vast majority of real-time information. Unfortunately, cost efficiencies and real-time pressures demand that producers, editors, and writers select and organize content for stereotypical audiences. In this article we illustrate how content understanding, user modeling, and tailored presentation generation promise personalcasts on demand. Specifically, we report on the design and implementation of a personalized version of a broadcast news understanding system, MITRE’s Broadcast News Navigator (BNN), that tracks and infers user content interests and media preferences. We report on the incorporation of Local Context Analysis to both expand the user’s original query to the most related terms in the corpus, as well as to allow the user to provide interactive feedback to enhance the relevance of selected newsstories. We describe an empirical study of the search for stories on ten topics from a video corpus. By personalizing both the selection of stories and the form in which they are delivered, we provide users with tailored broadcast news. This individual news personalization provides more fine-grained content tailoring than current personalized television program level recommenders and does not rely on externally provided program metadata.     

Extreme appraisals of internal states and bipolar symptoms: The Hypomanic Attitudes and Positive Predictions Inventory.

The Hypomanic Attitudes and Positive Predictions Inventory (HAPPI; W. Mansell, 2006) was developed to assess multiple, extreme, self-relevant appraisals of internal states. The present study aimed to validate the HAPPI in a clinical sample. Participants (N = 50) with a diagnosis of bipolar disorder (confirmed by a structured clinical interview) completed a series of questionnaires pertaining to clinical factors, reward motivation, cognitive style, symptoms, and functioning at baseline, in addition to the HAPPI. Over the following 4 weeks, participants were asked to complete self-report measures of symptoms (activation, perceived conflict, depression, and well-being), as well as work and social functioning, twice weekly. The authors hypothesized that the HAPPI would be associated with prospective bipolar symptoms and functioning, when controlling for baseline symptoms and potentially confounding measures. The HAPPI was positively, independently associated with activation and conflict after 4 weeks. Furthermore, individual HAPPI factors were associated with activation, conflict, and depression. The results provided preliminary support for the predictive validity of the HAPPI in a clinical sample. The HAPPI could be used in the future as a tool in cognitive behavioral therapy for bipolar disorder to identify problematic beliefs and guide formulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Low linolenate and commercial soybean oils diminish serum HDL cholesterol in young free-living adult females

OBJECTIVE: A mutant soybean line (A16) low in linolenic acid content (2% of oil by weight) was developed to increase oil oxidative stability. It was unknown whether serum lipid and lipoprotein concentrations in humans would be affected should A16 soybean oil (A16 oil) replace commercial soybean oil in diets. This study was conducted to examine the hypothesis that in free-living normolipidemic women, the consumption of A16 oil at approximately 10% of energy intake (en%) would not affect serum lipids and lipoproteins differently than would the consumption of the same amount of a commercial soybean oil with 7% of linolenic acid content. DESIGN: Fifteen free-living female college students consumed the soybean oil daily with regular meals for 9 weeks in different orders, with each test oil being eaten for 3 weeks. During the study, 13 en% was provided by each test oil and a total of 35 en% was from dietary fat. Serum concentrations of total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL cholesterol), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL cholesterol) and triacylglycerides (TAG) were measured. Serum total fatty acid patterns were analyzed as well. RESULTS: Each of the three test oils decreased serum total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol and TAG concentrations from the baseline values. The feeding of A16 and commercial soybean oils decreased serum HDL cholesterol significantly compared with coconut oil (p < 0.05). Dietary inclusion of coconut oil increased serum myristic acid significantly more than did either soybean oil (p < 0.01). Serum arachidonic acid concentrations were significantly greater with A16 consumption than with commercial soybean oil consumption (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: A16 and commercial soybean oils both diminished serum HDL cholesterol. Although the fatty acid composition differed between the two soybean oils, A16 oil and commercial oil had similar effects on serum concentrations of lipoproteins and lipids. With increased oxidative stability, A16 oil is a good alternative to commercial soybean oil.