Marking student programs using graph similarity

We present a novel approach to the automated marking of student programming assignments. Our technique quantifies the structural similarity between unmarked student submissions and marked solutions, and is the basis by which we assign marks. This is accomplished through an efficient novel graph similarity measure (AssignSim). Our experiments show good correlation of assigned marks with that of a human marker.     

Optimization of quality and operational costs through improved scheduling of harvest operations

The agriculture sector still lacks the tools and models to enhance the utilization of different resources. This paper addresses the vineyard harvesting problem in developing countries, with the objective of optimizing the wine quality and minimizing the operational costs. Heuristics were introduced to better assign the harvesting days to the different grape blocks that exist in the vineyard's field. The quality of the grapes was a key target as it can transform production from a pinnacle wine to a bulk one. We solved several numerical examples for verification and demonstrative purposes and found that our proposed approach finds solutions that significantly reduce the harvesting costs in the vineyard and considerably outperform Branch and Bound algorithm especially for large problems.     

Antidepressant pharmacotherapy helps some cigarette smokers more than others.

Adult smokers (N?=?253) without clinically significant depression were randomized on a double-blind basis to receive fluoxetine (30 or 60 mg daily) or a placebo for 10 weeks in combination with cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). It was predicted that fluoxetine would selectively benefit smokers with higher baseline depression, nicotine dependence, and weight concern and lower self-efficacy about quitting smoking. Among those who completed the prescribed treatment regimen, baseline depression scores moderated the treatment response. Logistic regression analyses showed that 1 and 3 months after the quit date, fluoxetine increased the likelihood of abstinence, as compared with placebo, among smokers with minor depression but not among those with little or no depression. Results suggest that, as an adjunct to CBT, fluoxetine enhances cessation by selectively benefiting medication-compliant smokers who display even subclinical levels of depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Taming reactive phenol tautomers and o-quinone methides with transition metals: a structure-reactivity relationship

Quinone methides act as important intermediates in organic syntheses, as well as in chemical and biological processes; however, examples of such isolated species are scarce as a result of their high reactivity. Phenol tautomers (keto form of phenol) are also important intermediates in several organic and organometallic reactions; nevertheless, isolated complexes are rare. This Account reviews the recent progress on the synthesis and reactivity of iridium and rhodium o-quinone methide complexes as well as on iridium-mediated ortho functionalization of phenols. This reaction was at the origin of the discovery of a general synthetic procedure to prepare the first metal-stabilized o-quinone methide.     

Visual analysis for evaluation of community detection algorithms

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Networks are often used to model the structure of interactions between parts of a system. One important characteristic of a network is the so-called network...     

An automatic method for the evaluation of xenobiotic toxicity on haematopoietic progenitors

Culture of haematopoietic progenitors is used in toxicology to evaluate the effects of xenobiotic contaminants on humans. One of the most important parts of this analysis is the quantification of cell aggregates in the culture. These aggregates can have different sizes and shapes, which reflect the category of cells (granulocyte or monocyte), and the growth percentage reflects the toxic effect of the contaminant. A proposal for an automatic method based on image analysis is described in this work. Algorithms able to solve the basic problems are proposed and tested, and the problem concerning a tridimensional analysis is exposed and discussed.     

The net effect of ultraviolet radiation on atmospheric dimethylsulphide over the Southern Indian Ocean

Dimethylsulphide (DMS) in the atmosphere may play an important role in the climate system. This study shows an inverse relationship between ultraviolet extremes and atmospheric DMS, independent of changes in wind speed, sea-surface temperature and photosynthetically active radiation, as measured at Amsterdam Island in the Southern Indian Ocean.     

Cramer-Rao bound and phase-diversity blind deconvolution performance versus diversity polynomials

Information theoretic bounds on the estimated Zernike coefficients for various diversity phase functions are presented. We show that, in certain cases, defocus diversity may yield a higher Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) than some other diversity phase functions. Using simulated images to evaluate the performance of the phase-diversity algorithm, we find that, for an extended scene and defocus diversity, the phase-diversity algorithm achieves the CRLB for known objects. Furthermore, the phase-diversity algorithm achieves the CRLB by a factor of approximately 2 for unknown objects.     

Personality Organizations, Psychiatric Severity, and Self and Object Representations.

This study examined the hypothesis that psychotic, borderline, and neurotic personality organizations (POs) present a progressive differentiation between self and object representations and an increasing integration of their bad and good aspects. Fifty patients participated in the study. Measures included scales of self and object representations (S. J. Blatt, S. A. Bers, & C. E. Schaffer, 1993; S. J. Blatt, H. Wiseman, E. Prince-Gibson, & C. Gatt, 1991), as well as the Personality Organization Diagnostic Form (L. Diguer & L. Normandin, 1997) and estimations of psychiatric severity. Results showed that PO groups differed in terms of the integration of the object and its valence. It was also observed that although object and self representations were closely intertwined, the latter showed more discrimination between POs than the former. Psychiatric severity was shown to correlate more with object representations than self representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)