SignTutor: An Interactive System for Sign Language Tutoring

Language learning can only advance with practice and corrective feedback. The interactive system, SignTutor, evaluates users' signing and gives multimodal feedback to help improve signing.     

Dimensions of marital conflict and children's social problem-solving skills.

Marital conflict has been shown to be negatively associated with child functioning. This study examined the relationships of negative and positive aspects of marital conflict and frequency of conflict with children's social problem-solving skills, as measured by effectiveness of alternative solutions. Mothers, fathers, and children reported on marital conflict. Mothers' higher negative conflict characteristics, in the context of greater frequency of conflict, and less frequent positive conflict characteristics, in the context of lower frequency of conflict, were significantly associated with their children's less effective social problem-solving solutions. For fathers, none of the negative but one of the positive conflict characteristics was significantly associated with their children's more effective social problem-solving solutions, regardless of the frequency of marital conflict. Children's perceptions of their parents' conflict were not significant predictors of their social problem-solving skills. Findings are interpreted in the framework of children's modeling aggressive conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Estimating the nutrient composition of South Asian foods using a recipe calculation method

Ten authentic and modified South Asian foods were prioritised from commonly-consumed foods in the UK [puri (white), puri (brown), aloo palak, Bengali chicken and potato curry, Bengali prawn bhuna, Pakistani zarda, rasmalai, chicken bhuna, aloo Bombay and lamb kebab] to estimate their nutrient composition. The recipe calculation procedure included additional parameters of water loss and fat uptake. Calculation of the recipes indicated loss of water (up to 24%) in all the dishes during cooking. Both types of puris had high levels of fat uptake during cooking [up to 18.4 g per 100 g of puri]. For most nutrients the calculated values exceeded those found by analysis. Differences between calculated and analytical data were smallest for protein, fat and carbohydrate. Other nutrients were less well estimated between calculated and analysed data especially for fibre, sodium, vitamin C, D, thiamin and riboflavin.     

Urban Social Tapestries

Urban Tapestries is an exploration into the potential costs and benefits of public authoring, that is, mapping and sharing of local knowledge using pervasive user-generated media. The aim of this investigation is to reveal the potential of pervasive computing to create and support relationships that extend beyond established social and cultural boundaries and enable the development of new practices based around place, identity and community. In this paper, we report on the work carried out within UT since its inception in 2002 discussing all relevant aspects from its background, approach and its technical development. We also identify the main findings of this work related to the use of pervasive computing to support pervasive user-generated content and identify some of the main questions that require further investigation.     

Determination of stilbenes in Sicilian pistachio by high-performance liquid chromatographic diode array (HPLC-DAD/FLD) and evaluation of eventually mycotoxin contamination

In this work, we have investigated about the presence of several natural stilbenes in 12 samples of pistachios harvested from 10 different farms of Sicily (Bronte and Agrigento). At the same time, we have evaluated the relation between the stilbenes synthesis and the possible contamination of mycotoxin produced by Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus parasiticus. We have found two types of stilbenes in the samples of pistachios examined: trans-resveratrol and trans-resveratrol-3-O-β-glucoside (trans-piceid). Their concentration ranged from 0.07 to 0.18 mg/kg (av. = 0.12 ± 0.03 mg/kg) for trans-resveratrol, from 6.20 to 8.15 mg/kg (av. = 6.97 ± 0.55 mg/kg) for trans-piceid and from 6.38 to 8.27 mg/kg (av. = 7.09 ± 0.54 mg/kg) for total resveratrol.     

Learning of nondomain facts in high- and low-knowledge domains.

Research on expertise has repeatedly documented that experts learn new information better than do novices, but only when the information is relevant to the expert's domain. It was found in Experiment 1 that participants showed superior learning and recall of a large quantity of new, non-domain-relevant facts about concepts within their domain of high knowledge than about concepts for which they had low domain knowledge. Experiment 2 investigated whether the participants' superior recall of new facts related to concepts within their domain of high knowledge was due to the number of prior facts associated with the concept or to the prior frequency of repetition of those concepts. It was found that participants' recall of new facts was better for concepts with 5 prior associated facts than for concepts with a single prior association but that the number of previous repetitions of each concept did not affect the level of recall for the new facts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Preparation and characterization of organosilicon thin films for selective adhesion of Yarrowia lipolytica yeast cells

The adhesion of Yarrowia lipolytica and Saccharomyces cerevisiae on organosilicon thin films deposited on polycarbonate substrates was investigated through a series of adhesion tests in order to obtain a selective substrate for Y. lipolytica cell adhesion. Organosilicon thin films were prepared using atmospheric pressure surface barrier discharge. The surface was characterized by its total surface energy with its components calculated using the acid‐base theory. Assessment of adhesion via cell surface coverage was obtained by standard tests and also through image analysis of yeast cells on the organosilicon layers. The results show that it is possible to create organosilicon thin films for a selective adhesion of Y. lipolytica face to S. cerevisiae behaviour, for potential use in fixed bed biofilm reactors for industrial purposes involving enzyme‐based biotransformations. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry     

An intelligent decision support system for digital preservation

This paper describes a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based on Web services technology designed to assist cultural heritage institutions in the implementation of migration based preservation interventions. The proposed SOA delivers a recommendation service and a method to carry out complex format migrations. The recommendation service is supported by three evaluation components that assess the quality of every migration intervention in terms of its performance (Migration Broker), suitability of involved formats (Format Evaluator) and data loss (Object Evaluator). Throughout the paper the whole workflow between these three components is explained in detail as well as the most relevant tasks that are carried out internally in each of them. The proposed system is also able to produce preservation metadata that can be used by client institutions to document preservation interventions and retain objects’ authenticity. Although the primary goal of this SOA is the implementation of migration based preservation interventions, it can also be used for other purposes such as comparing file formats or evaluating the performance of conversion applications.     

The effects of a language and literacy intervention on Head Start children and teachers.

A language and literacy intervention was implemented in 10 Head Start classrooms. Teachers were trained in specific book reading and conversation strategies. The focus of the intervention was to train teachers how to increase opportunities for language and vocabulary development in young children. At the end of the year, children in the intervention classrooms performed significantly better than children in the control classrooms on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III and the Expressive One-Word Vocabulary Test (3rd ed.). In addition, teachers in the intervention classrooms used strategies that promoted language development during book reading and other classroom activities. Head Start teachers can be trained to implement strategies that have positive effects on children's language and literacy development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Performance evaluation of supercomputers using HPCC and IMB Benchmarks

The HPC Challenge (HPCC) Benchmark suite and the Intel MPI Benchmark (IMB) are used to compare and evaluate the combined performance of processor, memory subsystem and interconnect fabric of five leading supercomputers—SGI Altix BX2, Cray X1, Cray Opteron Cluster, Dell Xeon Cluster, and NEC SX-8. These five systems use five different networks (SGI NUMALINK4, Cray network, Myrinet, InfiniBand, and NEC IXS). The complete set of HPCC Benchmarks are run on each of these systems. Additionally, we present Intel MPI Benchmarks results to study the performance of 11 MPI communication functions on these systems.