L'IPAH, version canadienne-fran?aise de l'échelle de Levenson mesurant le lieu de contr?le tridimensionnel.

Assessed the reliability and validity of the French-Canadian version of H. Levenson's (1973) internality, powerful others, and chance locus of control scales. Data from 2 studies of 294 middle-class adults show that the French-Canadian version of the scales was comparable to that of the original version. The importance of utilizing the appropriate statistical models of analysis to benefit from the multidimensional model of locus of control is emphasized. (English abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motion synthesis and editing for the generation of new sign language content

Machine Translation - Existing work on the animation of signing avatars often relies on pure procedural techniques or on the playback of Motion Capture (MoCap) data. While the first solution...     

Feature extraction of the first difference of EMG time series for EMG pattern recognition

This paper demonstrates the utility of a differencing technique to transform surface EMG signals measured during both static and dynamic contractions such that they become more stationary. The technique was evaluated by three stationarity tests consisting of the variation of two statistical properties, i.e., mean and standard deviation, and the reverse arrangements test. As a result of the proposed technique, the first difference of EMG time series became more stationary compared to the original measured signal. Based on this finding, the performance of time-domain features extracted from raw and transformed EMG was investigated via an EMG classification problem (i.e., eight dynamic motions and four EMG channels) on data from 18 subjects. The results show that the classification accuracies of all features extracted from the transformed signals were higher than features extracted from the original signals for six different classifiers including quadratic discriminant analysis. On average, the proposed differencing technique improved classification accuracies by 2–8%.     

Calorimetric study of fluorinated methacrylic and vinyl polymer blends: part 2: correlation between miscibility, chemical structure and χ12 interaction parameter in binary systems

The miscibility of poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) and (trifluoroethyl methacrylic ester-MMA) copolymers (MMA-MATRIFE) with poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) and VDF copolymers was studied by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) as a function of the fluorinated copolymer crystallinity and fluoroalkyl methacrylic ester content in the methacrylic copolymer. Miscibility limits were found identical whatever be the blend preparation technique, although solution mixing induced some polymer fractionation, thus giving slightly higher blend glass transition temperature. The miscibility domain widths are reduced when using MMA-MATRIFE copolymers as compared to PMMA-containing blends and miscibility limits are dependent on the MATRIFE content in the methacrylic copolymer. Moreover, PVDF or VDF copolymer melting enthalpy decrease is associated to a partial dissolution of the semi-crystalline polymer in PMMA or MMA-MATRIFE copolymer above the total miscibility limit. The evolution of dynamic moduli as a function of blends composition confirms the miscibility limits determined by DSC. The Flory-Huggins interaction parameters were determined through the melting point depression analysis and compared to correlate the intensity of inter- or intra-molecular interactions between the polymers to the postulated ‘acidity’ of hydrogen atoms in various VDF-containing polymers. The interaction parameter χ₁₂ increases with the fluoroalkyl methacrylic ester content, corresponding to a prevalence of intra-molecular on inter-molecular interactions in these blends. Similarly, PVDF offers higher χ₁₂ values as compared to VDF-TFE or particularly to VDF-TrFE copolymers. These results highlight the importance of the nature of fluorinated polymers and of the inter- or intra-molecular character of dipolar interactions on both, copolymer miscibility and interaction parameter values.     

Anionic polymerization of ethylene oxide with cryptates as counterions: 2

A kinetic study of the anionic polymerization of ethylene oxide has been made in tetrahydrofuran at 20°C, with the cryptate Cs⁺ + [TC] as counterion, [TC] being a spheroidal macrotricyclic ligand. Conductance measurements have been made on THF solutions of ?₄BCs + [TC]. Ionic associations higher than cryptated ion pairs are negligible for living end concentrations lower than 3 × 10^?4 moll^?1. k_± and the alkoxide ion pair dissociation constant K_D were determined from both sets of kinetic data obtained with and without added salt knowing the value of k_? from kinetic data performed with K⁺ + [222] as counterion. Free alkoxide ions are about twenty times more reactive than cryptated caesium ion pairs.     

Boolean factors as a means of clustering of interestingness measures of association rules

Measures of interestingness play a crucial role in association rule mining. An important methodological problem, on which several papers appeared in the literature, is to provide a reasonable classification of the measures. In this paper, we explore Boolean factor analysis, which uses formal concepts corresponding to classes of measures as factors, for the purpose of clustering of the measures. Unlike the existing studies, our method reveals overlapping clusters of interestingness measures. We argue that the overlap between clusters is a desired feature of natural groupings of measures and that because formal concepts are used as factors in Boolean factor analysis, the resulting clusters have a clear meaning and are easy to interpret. We conduct three case studies on clustering of measures, provide interpretations of the resulting clusters and compare the results to those of the previous approaches reported in the literature.     

Nexus VII: Relationships Between Architecture and Mathematics

Sylvie Duvernoy reports on the seventh international, interdisciplinary Nexus conference for architecture and mathematics. Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, USA 23-25 June 2008     

Effect of porosity and hydrostatic pressure on water absorption in a semicrystalline fluoropolymer

This paper discusses the effect of porosity and hydrostatic pressure on diffusion kinetics and equilibrium water uptake in a semicrystalline fluoropolymer. Water sorption experiments at atmospheric pressure and under water pressures up to 250 MPa were carried out during 18 months at 40 °C on reference and porous samples. Porosity of samples was induced due to a cavitation process occurring at the highest triaxiality area of waisted and notched specimens during tensile tests. Water uptake was found to be very sensitive to porosity, showing an increase in samples with a high void fraction. On the other hand, water content decreased with increasing pressure suggesting a compaction of the porous space in which water can be stored. Two models describing this water uptake behaviour were considered. The first is a classical model which assumes that sorption occurs only by diffusion following Fick’s law. Fick’s model was found to be in agreement with the experimental results. A “Langmuir-type” sorption model was also proposed to describe water uptake in porous samples, considering a two-phase water transport mechanism: one portion of the absorbed water diffuses through the polymer matrix and the other portion is stored in voids. This model was implemented in a user subroutine using ABAQUS? software and simulations were confronted to experimental sorption curves showing satisfactory agreements. The potential of the Langmuir-type sorption model resides on its availability to be coupled to a poro-mechanical model, in order to improve the understanding of coupling between the mechanical behaviour and water sorption mechanism in a porous polymer.     

Inexact graph matching based on kernels for object retrieval in image databases

In the framework of online object retrieval with learning, we address the problem of graph matching using kernel functions. An image is represented by a graph of regions where the edges represent the spatial relationships. Kernels on graphs are built from kernel on walks in the graph. This paper firstly proposes new kernels on graphs and on walks, which are very efficient for graphs of regions. Secondly we propose fast solutions for exact or approximate computation of these kernels. Thirdly we show results for the retrieval of images containing a specific object with the help of very few examples and counter-examples in the framework of an active retrieval scheme.     

Can muscle lysosomal enzymes affect muscle collagen post-mortem?

Incubation of collagen fibres with muscle lysosomal enzymes at 37°C, pH 5·5, affects significantly the thermal stability of muscle collagen. The thermolabile fraction increases and the strength of the fibres measured through thermal contraction decreases by/nearly 50% after treatment. It is concluded that the muscle lysosomal fraction contains an enzyme system which can reduce the strength of muscle collagen at pH 5·5. The reason why this potential is not exhibited post-mortem could be due to a limited release of the enzymes or the presence of enzyme inhibitors.