Workload, control, and social support effects on serum lipids: A longitudinal study among apparently healthy employed adults.

The authors investigated the direct and interactive effects of the job demand– control–support (JDC-S) model’s components on subsequent changes in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and triglycerides (TRI) separately for male and female employees. In contrast to all 14 past studies on these relationships, the authors used a longitudinal design. Study participants (N = 1,137, 66% men) were all apparently healthy employees who underwent a routine health check at 2 points in time (Time 1 and Time 2) about 22 months apart. In these analyses, the authors controlled for the Time 1 level of each criterion and for other confounders. Most of the direct and moderating effects found did not support the predictions of the JDC-S model; this finding is in agreement with the majority of past cross-sectional studies. The authors did not find any evidence supporting the existence of a reverse causation for either of the components of the JDC-S model. The authors suggest that serum lipids may not be a physiological mechanism mediating the effects of the JDC-S model on atherosclerotic diseases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Generating a multiplicity of policies for agent steering in crowd simulation

Pedestrian steering algorithms range from completely procedural to entirely data‐driven, but the former grossly generalize across possible human behaviors and suffer computationally, whereas the latter are limited by the burden of ever‐increasing data samples. Our approach seeks the balanced middle ground by deriving a collection of machine‐learned policies based on the behavior of a procedural steering algorithm through the decomposition of the space of possible steering scenarios into steering contexts. The resulting algorithm scales well in the number of contexts, the use of new data sets to create new policies, and in the number of controlled agents as the policies become a simple evaluation of the rules asserted by the machine‐learning process. We also explore the use of synthetic data from an “oracle algorithm” that serves as an as‐needed source of samples, which can be stochastically polled for effective coverage. We observe that our approach produces pedestrian steering similar to that of the oracle steering algorithm, but with a significant performance boost. Runtime was reduced from hours under the oracle algorithm with 10 agents to on the order of 10 frames per second (FPS) with 3000 agents. We also analyze the nature of collisions in such a framework with no explicit collision avoidance. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Collective-agreement-based pruning of ensembles

Ensemble methods combine several individual pattern classifiers in order to achieve better classification. The challenge is to choose the minimal number of classifiers that achieve the best performance. An ensemble that contains too many members might incur large storage requirements and even reduce the classification performance. The goal of ensemble pruning is to identify a subset of ensemble members that performs at least as good as the original ensemble and discard any other members.In this paper, we introduce the Collective-Agreement-based Pruning (CAP) method. Rather than ranking individual members, CAP ranks subsets by considering the individual predictive ability of each member along with the degree of redundancy among them. Subsets whose members highly agree with the class while having low inter-agreement are preferred.     

Electronic Properties of C60 Thin Films

Abstract

The electronic structure of polycrystalline C₆₀ thin films has been investigated using surface photovoltage spectroscopy (SPS) and conductivity measurements. the films show n-type semiconductivity with an activation energy of ～ 0.8 eV as found from the temperature dependence of the conductivity at high temperatures. the electronic structure emerging from our SPS results comprises a 1.6 eV photo-conduction gap, a mobility gap of about 2.25 eV and two gap states, a donor and an acceptor, at 0.35 eV and (1.0-1.1) eV, respectively, below the photo-conduction edge. the results indicate the possibility of the existence of band tails, extending into the optical gap of these films, as well as other deep gap states.     

On Projection Matrices $$\mathcal{P}^k \to \mathcal{P}^2 ,k = 3,...,6, $$ and their Applications in Computer Vision

Projection matrices from projective spaces have long been used in multiple-view geometry to model the perspective projection created by the pin-hole camera. In this work we introduce higher-dimensional mappings for the representation of various applications in which the world we view is no longer rigid. We also describe the multi-view constraints from these new projection matrices (where k > 3) and methods for extracting the (non-rigid) structure and motion for each application.     

Solubility Limit of MgO in Al2O3 at 1600°C

The solubility of Mg in alumina was measured using wavelength-dispersive spectroscopy mounted on a scanning electron microscope. Careful calibration of the microscope's working conditions was performed in order to optimize the detection limit and accuracy. Measurements were conducted on water-quenched and furnace-cooled samples, without any thermal or chemical etching to avoid alteration of the bulk concentration. The results indicate the solubility limit of Mg in alumina to be 132±11 ppm at 1600°C.     

Advanced trauma life support versus Combat Trauma Life Support courses: a comparison of cognitive knowledge decline

Post-thyroidectomy I-131 whole-body scintigraphy is an important aspect in the management of patients with thyroid cancer. The scan is used to detect residual thyroid tissue and distant functioning metastases. Extrathyroid I-131 accumulation does not always denote metastatic disease, and several potential sources of false-positive I-131 scans have been identified. This report presents four cases of benign oral disease as a cause of false-positive I-131 uptake. Benign oral disease has not been documented previously as an important source of false-positive I-131 whole-body scans.     

Settling strikes in real life and simulations in North America and different regions of Europe.

Data for 2,069 managers from 4 regions (9 countries) taken from the International Research Groups on Management data bank and dealing with a simulation of negotiations, were contrasted with known industrial conflict patterns in the 4 regions. The importance of individual commitment to group strategy in affecting the simulation results regarding the time of negotiation and the bargaining issues was related to cultural differences. Possible implications of cultural differences to the study of managerial behavior in resolving industrial disputes are discussed. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Localization of function via lesion analysis

This article presents a general approach for employing lesion analysis to address the fundamental challenge of localizing functions in a neural system. We describe functional contribution analysis (FCA), which assigns contribution values to the elements of the network such that the ability to predict the network's performance in response to multilesions is maximized. The approach is thoroughly examined on neurocontroller networks of evolved autonomous agents. The FCA portrays a stable set of neuronal contributions and accurate multilesion predictions that are significantly better than those obtained based on the classical single lesion approach. It is also used for a detailed synaptic analysis of the neurocontroller connectivity network, delineating its main functional backbone. The FCA provides a quantitative way of measuring how the network functions are localized and distributed among its elements. Our results question the adequacy of the classical single lesion analysis traditionally used in neuroscience and show that using lesioning experiments to decipher even simple neuronal systems requires a more rigorous multilesion analysis.