Gaze tutor: A gaze-reactive intelligent tutoring system

We developed an intelligent tutoring system (ITS) that aims to promote engagement and learning by dynamically detecting and responding to students' boredom and disengagement. The tutor uses a commercial eye tracker to monitor a student's gaze patterns and identify when the student is bored, disengaged, or is zoning out. The tutor then attempts to reengage the student with dialog moves that direct the student to reorient his or her attentional patterns towards the animated pedagogical agent embodying the tutor. We evaluated the efficacy of the gaze-reactive tutor in promoting learning, motivation, and engagement in a controlled experiment where 48 students were tutored on four biology topics with both gaze-reactive and non-gaze-reactive (control condition) versions of the tutor. The results indicated that: (a) gaze-sensitive dialogs were successful in dynamically reorienting students’ attentional patterns to the important areas of the interface, (b) gaze-reactivity was effective in promoting learning gains for questions that required deep reasoning, (c) gaze-reactivity had minimal impact on students’ state motivation and on self-reported engagement, and (d) individual differences in scholastic aptitude moderated the impact of gaze-reactivity on overall learning gains. We discuss the implications of our findings, limitations, future work, and consider the possibility of using gaze-reactive ITSs in classrooms.     

Corrections for nonuniform sampling distortions in magnetic resonance imagery

A technique for estimating and correcting nonuniform sampling distortions in magnetic resonance imagery is presented. The technique consists of first estimating the sampling grid distortion using a parametric model, and then estimating the uniformly sampled data by interpolation on the nonuniform grid. Parameterized models for two particular sampling grid distortion are presented. Maximum likelihood and maximum a posteriori estimators are developed for these distortions. Using computer simulated data, these estimators are shown to perform well.     

Fourth International Conference on Durability of Building Materials and Components

RILEM Bulletin

Fourth International Conference on Durability of Building Materials and Components     

Vortex rings and the superfluid λ-transition

A vortex-ring formulation of the₄He -transition provides a clear physical picture of the superfluid transition. The thermally excited rings are dipoles which orient in an applied flow field, and their net backflow cancels part of the applied flow, reducing the superfluid density. At the -point rings of infinite size drive the superfluid density to zero as a power law of the reduced temperature, with an exponent of 0.672. By fitting to the experimental superfluid amplitude the core energy of the smallest rings is found to be 6.1K at T and their diameter is 2.3 Å. It is proposed that these can be identified as the roton excitations of the Landau model. The vortex theory also yields new insights into topics such as boundary effects at a wall, finite-size effects, and the dynamics of the transition.     

Backscattered electron imaging of dental amalgam

A study of the microstructure of set dental amalgams has been undertaken using techniques of back-scattered electron imaging, transmission electron microscopy and X-ray analysis. It has been demonstrated that small ( 0.2, m) particles of a copper-tin phase are present in the matrix of the conventional low-copper amalgams and that the reaction zone around the silver copper eutectic phase in the high copper dispersion type amalgams is of a duplex nature consisting of the Cu₆Sn₅, phase and an intervening layer of silver-mercury phase.     

Effects of enzymes and gamma irradiation on the tensile strength and morphology of poly(p-dioxanone) fibers

The objective of this study was to examine how and to what extent a new degradable polymeric fiber, poly(p-dioxanone), used as a surgical suture material, degrades in the presence of enzymes and after γ-irradiation. The degradation of the fiber was studied mechanically using an Instron and morphologically by SEM. Both esterase and trypsin enzymes and their corresponding buffer controls were used. The fibers were γ-irradiated at the dosages ranging from 0 to 20 Mrad, immersed in the solution for up to 70 days, and then removed for tensile strength and morphological examinations. It was found that γ-irradiation alone lowered the tensile strength of PDS fibers and made them more susceptible to hydrolysis. Esterase and trypsin did not accelerate the hydrolytic degradtion of this fiber to any significant level. Both γ-irradiation and enzymes influenced the gross morphological characteristic of PDS fibers when they were subjected to hydrolysis. The most important morphological observations were the formation of surface cracks and chips on the fibers and the subsequent peeling of the chips. Enzyme-treated PDS fibers exhibited similar morphological findings but the size of the chips was smaller. The morphological observations of PDS fibers were consistent with the tensile strength data.     

Incorporation of surface-modified UHMWPE powders and fibers in tough polyurethane composites

Ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) powder (60 micron diameter) and chopped fiber (6.5 mm length) were surface treated with a blend of reactive gases (fluorine and oxygen.) These powders and fibers were then compounded into a thermoset polyurethane matrix. Surface-treated and control reinforcements are compared at a 10 vol.% loading level. Tensile testing indicates improved stress transfer with surface treatment. Stress transfer is also improved with fibers versus powders. Fracture toughness is characterized by measuring the essential work of fracture, w_e. Surface-treated fiber composites exhibit work of fracture values almost three times the unfilled polyurethane values. Abrasion resistance was also measured. Surface treatment was found to significantly lower wear rates of powder composites. Fiber composites had lower wear rates than powder composites, although surface treatment had little effect. An approximate inverse relationship was found between wear rate and essential work of fracture.     

The Shape Boltzmann Machine: A Strong Model of Object Shape

A good model of object shape is essential in applications such as segmentation, detection, inpainting and graphics. For example, when performing segmentation, local constraints on the shapes can help where object boundaries are noisy or unclear, and global constraints can resolve ambiguities where background clutter looks similar to parts of the objects. In general, the stronger the model of shape, the more performance is improved. In this paper, we use a type of deep Boltzmann machine (Salakhutdinov and Hinton, International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Statistics, 2009) that we call a Shape Boltzmann Machine (SBM) for the task of modeling foreground/background (binary) and parts-based (categorical) shape images. We show that the SBM characterizes a strong model of shape, in that samples from the model look realistic and it can generalize to generate samples that differ from training examples. We find that the SBM learns distributions that are qualitatively and quantitatively better than existing models for this task.     

All-glass system for preparative gas chromatography using capillary columns

A zero dead-volume all-glass-lined stainless-steel effluent splitter with a modified thermal gradient collector was designed for preparative gas chromatography using glass capillary columns. This system gives efficient collection of extremely pure samples of the 1-ng to 10-g range for spectral analysis and biological testing.Approved as TA 15656 by the director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station in cooperation with ARS, USDA. Supported by the Texas Department of Agriculture interagency agreement IAC-0487 (78-79).     

Slow stable crack growth in high density polyethylenes

The phenomenon of slow stable crack growth in polyethylene is investigated using notched specimens subject to constant load and the concepts of fracture mechanics. The effect of specimen geometry and dimension, the loading and the mode of loading on the applied stress intensity factor versus crack speed ($\text{K}{}_{\mathrm{c}}\text{-}\text{a}\text{?}$) curves has been studied to demonstrate that K_c is the controlling stress parameter for crack growth under suitable conditions. $\text{K}{}_{\mathrm{c}}\text{-}\text{a}\text{?}$ curves are obtained for a high density polyethylene homopolymer in distilled water and in a diluted detergent solution at four different temperatures. Results are also obtained for a much tougher medium density polyethylene copolymer whenever possible. Several mechanisms can be identified from the form of the $\text{K}{}_{\mathrm{c}}\text{-}\text{a}\text{?}$ curves. Two, in particular, have been observed but not explained before: (i) crack growth with a time dependence of 0.25, and (ii) the high $\text{K}{}_{\mathrm{c}}\text{-}\text{a}\text{?}$ slopes for crack growth in a tough copolymer. With the help of scanning electron microscopic studies of the fracture surfaces, (i) is postulated to be due to diffusion controlled void growth process and (ii) is considered to be the result of crack tip blunting effects. From the temperature dependence of crack growth, the activation energy of the diffusion controlled crack growth process is found to coincide with that of the x-relaxation process in polyethylene implying that diffusion controlled crack growth may be related to the motion of main chains in the polymer.