Insights from Dividing 3D Goal-Directed Movements into Meaningful Phases

Existing measures for evaluating user performance on interaction tasks in virtual environments don't often provide sufficient information for improving these interactions. A new method for analyzing 3D goal-directed movements divides them into meaningful phases. The authors applied this method to experimental data collected for a 3D task resembling a standardized 2D multidirectional pointing task (ISO 9241-9). The results and analysis demonstrate that the method provides a more detailed insight into 3D goal-directed movements. This analysis can help researchers better identify input devices' and interaction techniques' strengths and weaknesses. This article is part of a special issue on 3D user interfaces.     

Atom-Aid: Detecting and Surviving Atomicity Violations

Hardware can play a significant role in improving reliability of multithreaded software. Recent architectural proposals arbitrarily group consecutive dynamic memory operations into atomic blocks to enforce coarse-grained memory ordering, providing implicit atomicity. The authors of this article observe that implicit atomicity probabilistically hides atomicity violations by reducing the number of interleaving opportunities between memory operations. They propose Atom-Aid, which creates implicit atomic blocks intelligently instead of arbitrarily, dramatically reducing the probability that atomicity violations will manifest themselves.     

A Kleene–Schützenberger theorem for weighted timed automata

During the last years, weighted timed automata have received much interest in the real-time community. Weighted timed automata form an extension of timed automata and allow us to assign weights (costs) to both locations and edges. This model, introduced by Alur et al. (2001) and Behrmann et al. (2001), permits the treatment of continuous consumption of resources and has led to much research on scheduling problems, optimal reachability and model checking. Also, several authors have derived Kleene-type characterizations of (unweighted) timed automata and their accepted timed languages. The goal of this paper is to provide a characterization of the behaviours of weighted timed automata by rational power series. We define weighted timed automata with weights taken in an arbitrary semiring, resulting in a model that subsumes several weighted timed automata concepts of the literature. For our main result, we combine the methods of Schützenberger, a recent approach for a Kleene-type theorem for unweighted timed automata by Bouyer and Petit as well as new techniques. Our main result also implies Kleene-type theorems for several subclasses of weighted timed automata investigated before, e.g., for timed automata and timed automata with stopwatch observers.     

Artificial Agent Action in Markets

We summarise our experiences of a number of demonstrators and simulation experiments designed to test the feasibility of using artificial decision making agents in real-time domains, and comment on the significance of our results to autonomous artificial agent action patterns in markets. Our main hypothesis is that the use of norms can extend the capability of artificial decision makers beyond what is obtained from implementing individual utility maximizers in keeping with rational choice theory.     

Proteomic studies in animal models of diabetes

The aim of this review is to provide an overview of proteomic studies in animal models of diabetes and to give some insight into the different methods available today in the rapidly developing field of proteomics. A summary of 31 papers published between 1997 and 2007 is presented. For instance, proteomics has been used to study the development of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, diabetic complications in tissues like heart, kidney and retina and changes after treatment with anti-diabetic drugs like peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors agonists. Together, these studies give a good overview of a number of experimental approaches. Proteomics holds the promise of providing major contributions to the field of diabetes research. However, to achieve this, a number of issues need to be resolved. Appropriate data representation to facilitate data comparison, exchange, and verification is required, as well as improved statistical assessment of proteomic experiments. In addition, it is important to follow up the results with functional studies to be able to make biologically relevant conclusions. The potential of proteomics to dissect complex human disorders is now beginning to be realized. In the future, this will result in new important information concerning diabetes.     

Musculoskeletal disorders among female and male air traffic controllers performing identical and demanding computer work

Operators with identical, demanding computer work (90 female and 97 male air traffic controllers) were found to have high prevalences of disorders (assessed by questionnaire and physical examination) in neck, shoulders and upper back. In spite of the identical work, the women displayed higher prevalences than the men (e.g. neck diagnoses 21% vs. 4%). Disorders in elbows, wrists and hands were less common, with similar rates in both genders. Generally, the psychosocial work environment (assessed by questionnaire) was found to be good, but with large inter-individual variation. Women experienced lower decision latitude than men, particularly regarding influence and freedom at work, but perceived higher social support. Physically, the work was characterized by relatively low angular velocities of upper arms (measured by inclinometry) and wrists (right: < 1 degrees/s during 19% of time, measuring by goniometry), dynamic muscular activities and high time fractions of rest in the trapezius and forearm extensor muscles (measuring by electromyography). There were only minor differences between the genders.     

Ultrastructural evidence for an innervation of epithelial enterochromaffine cells in the guinea pig duodenum

The innervation of the duodenal enterochromaffine cells (E.C.) of the guinea pig was studied at the electronmicroscopic level. Pretreatment with 5-OH-dopamine was performed to visualize catecholaminergic (CA) nervous elements. Near the basement membrane of all examined E.C. in the crypts, bundles of unmyelinated nerve processes were observed, only partly ensheathed in a Schwann cell cover. At least 4 types of processes could be observed. 1) Boutons containing only small clear vesicles, probably cholinergic fibres; 2) boutons with small clear vesicles, and in addition large (greater than 200 nm) granules with a dense matrix (P-type-fibres); 3) boutons with small electron-dense vesicles, probably CA-fibres; and 4) processes with few vesicles but having the appearance of dendrites. No typical synaptic arrangements were observed, but the minimal distance between the E.C. and the nerve bundles was 150 to 250 nm, thus well within the functional limits of the "autonomic gap". Thus epithelial E.C. may be influenced by several types of nervous elements, including CA-fibres.     

Computer use in older adults: Determinants and the relationship with cognitive change over a 6 year episode

Cognitively challenging activities may support the mental abilities of older adults. The use of computers and the Internet provides divergent cognitive challenges to older persons, and in previous studies, positive effects of computer and Internet use on the quality of life have been demonstrated. The present study addresses two research aims regarding predictors of computer use and the relationship between computer use and changes in cognitive abilities over a 6-year period in both younger (24-49 years) and older adults (older than 50 years). Data were obtained from an ongoing study into cognitive aging: the Maastricht Aging Study, involving 1823 normal aging adults who were followed for 9 years. The results showed age-related differences in predictors of computer use: the only predictor in younger participants was level of education, while in older participants computer use was also predicted by age, sex and feelings of loneliness. Protective effects of computer use were found for measures of selective attention and memory, in both older and younger participants. Effect sizes were small, which suggests that promotion of computer activities in older adults to prevent cognitive decline may not be an efficient strategy.     

Reducing Playground Bullying and Supporting Beliefs: An Experimental Trial of the Steps to Respect Program.

Six schools were randomly assigned to a multilevel bullying intervention or a control condition. Children in Grades 3-6 (N=1,023) completed pre- and posttest surveys of behaviors and beliefs and were rated by teachers. Observers coded playground behavior of a random subsample (n=544). Hierarchical analyses of changes in playground behavior revealed declines in bullying and argumentative behavior among intervention-group children relative to control-group children, increases in agreeable interactions, and a trend toward reduced destructive bystander behavior. Those in the intervention group reported enhanced bystander responsibility, greater perceived adult responsiveness, and less acceptance of bullying/aggression than those in the control group. Self-reported aggression did not differ between the groups. Implications for future research on the development and prevention of bullying are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Control applications of nonlinear convex programming

Since 1984 there has been a concentrated effort to develop efficient interior-point methods for linear programming (LP). In the last few years researchers have begun to appreciate a very important property of these interior-point methods (beyond their efficiency for LP): they extend gracefully to nonlinear convex optimization problems. New interior-point algorithms for problem classes such as semidefinite programming (SDP) or second-order cone programming (SOCP) are now approaching the extreme efficiency of modern linear programming codes. In this paper we discuss three examples of areas of control where our ability to efficiently solve nonlinear convex optimization problems opens up new applications. In the first example we show how SOCP can be used to solve robust open-loop optimal control problems. In the second example, we show how SOCP can be used to simultaneously design the set-point and feedback gains for a controller, and compare this method with the more standard approach. Our final application concerns analysis and synthesis via linear matrix inequalities and SDP.