Preference for complexity in acute schizophrenics.

Employed a paired comparisons scaling technique to assess the preference of schizophrenics for varying quantities of information as presented in geometric forms. Both good premorbid paranoid and poor premorbid nonparanoid schizophrenics showed their greatest preference for the least complex shapes. Results are discussed in terms of H. Munsinger and W. Kessen's (see 39:2) conception of a match between preference for environmental information and input-processing capacity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Selenium biotransformations in an insect ecosystem: effects of insects on phytoremediation

Phytoremediation of selenium-contaminated soils may be influenced by higher trophic levels including insects. We examined how selenium affects the behavior, survival, and development of the wasp parasitoid Cotesia marginiventris, parasitizing its natural host, the beet armyworm Spodoptera exigua, feeding on alfalfa, Medicago sativa, irrigated with water containing selenate. X-ray absorption spectroscopy was used to quantify the selenium chemical forms in each trophic level. Alfalfa partially transformed selenate to organoselenium. S. exigua contained only organoselenium, both directly absorbed from M. sativa and transformed from selenate. C. marginiventris cocoons collected shortly after larval emergence contained only organoselenium derived from the host. The surprising finding of trimethylselenonium-like species in adult parasitoids and the cocoons from which they emerged suggests that adults and pharates can detoxify excess selenium through methylation and volatilization. Adult parasitoids do not discriminate against selenium-containing alfalfa, even though alfalfa generates selenium volatiles. Parasitoids raised on selenium-fed larvae emerged later and pupae weighed less than their selenium-free counterparts. We conclude therefore that C. marginiventris can be used to control S. exigua damage to M. sativa being used to remove selenium from soils. Moreover, the presence of such insects may improve phytoremediation by increasing biotransformation of inorganic selenium and release of volatile selenium species.     

The design engineering case for near net shape forming

The familiar shape of engineering components is related to the traditional manufacturing methods which involve metal cutting operations. Improved designs may be possible with the use of near net shape forming methods and the possibilities are discussed for a number of simple engineering components. The service constraints, in particular tolerances and surface finish, are important factors governing the design of components.     

Designing mobile technologies to support co-present collaboration

Mobile technologies offer new opportunities for childrens educational activities in that they can be used across different locations and times. Naturally, some instances of mobile technology use will necessitate, or be enhanced by, the sharing of information. Social interaction is important for sharing ideas, constructing and shaping understanding and fundamental for educational development. However the physical size of mobile technologies presents interesting challenges when designing for collaborative activities. When designing mobile technologies the importance of collaborative tasks has often been overlooked. The replacement of low-tech artefacts with digital devices, for supporting multiple users, can inhibit the shareability of information. We present three projects where mobile technologies have been used as part of a larger mixed reality experience. Novel technologies were used to support childrens collaborative activities in storytelling, an adventure game and during an outdoor field trip. Interaction with mobile devices within each project is reviewed and the authors highlight important considerations for their design and use across multiple contexts.     

Synthesizing English emphatic speech for multimodal corrective feedback in computer-aided pronunciation training

Emphasis plays an important role in expressive speech synthesis in highlighting the focus of an utterance to draw the attention of the listener. We present a hidden Markov model (HMM)-based emphatic speech synthesis model. The ultimate objective is to synthesize corrective feedback in a computer-aided pronunciation training (CAPT) system. We first analyze contrastive (neutral versus emphatic) speech recording. The changes of the acoustic features of emphasis at different prosody locations and the local prominences of emphasis are analyzed. Based on the analysis, we develop a perturbation model that predicts the changes of the acoustic features from neutral to emphatic speech with high accuracy. Further based on the perturbation model we develop an HMM-based emphatic speech synthesis model. Different from the previous work, the HMM model is trained with neutral corpus, but the context features and additional acoustic-feature-related features are used during the growing of the decision tree. Then the output of the perturbation model can be used to supervise the HMM model to synthesize emphatic speeches instead of applying the perturbation model at the backend of a neutral speech synthesis model directly. In this way, the demand of emphasis corpus is reduced and the speech quality decreased by speech modification algorithm is avoided. The experiments indicate that the proposed emphatic speech synthesis model improves the emphasis quality of synthesized speech while keeping a high degree of the naturalness.     

Reflections on "Reflections on introspection."

Comments on J. Radford's (see record 1974-26503-001) reflections on introspection as event and process and argues that they reflect prevalent misconceptions and distortions of the behaviorist view of the status of introspection in psychological inquiry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)