Automatic generation of emotions in tutoring agents for affective e-learning in medical education

Web-based education is particularly appropriate for remote teaching and learning at any time and place, away from classrooms and does not necessarily require the presence of a human instructor. The need for time and place independence is even greater in some cases, such as for medical instructors who are usually doctors that have to treat patients on top of their tutoring duties. However, this independence from real teachers and classrooms may influence negatively the students who may feel deprived of the benefits of human–human interaction. In this paper we describe a novel approach for incorporating affective characteristics into e-learning through an authoring tool. The authoring tool incorporates and adapts principles of a cognitive theory for modeling possible emotional states that a tutoring agent may use for educational purposes. Medical instructors may use this authoring tool to create their own educational characters that will interact affectively with their students in the e-learning environment.     

A simple mathematical formula describing the survival kinetics of E.coli in natural waters

The fecal indicator bacteria (Escherichia coli, fecal coliforms and fecal streptococci) are typically used to measure the sanitary quality of water for recreational, industrial, agricultural and water supply purposes. They are natural inhabitants of the gastrointestinal tracts of humans and other warm‐blooded animals. These bacteria in general cause no harm. They are released into the environment with feces, and are then exposed to a variety of environmental conditions that eventually cause their death. In general, it is believed that the fecal indicator cannot grow in natural environments, since they are adapted to live in the gastrointestinal tract. Studies have shown that fecal indicator bacteria survive from a few hours up to several days in surface water, but may survive for days or months in lake‐sediments, where they may be protected from sunlight and predators. In ground water, temperature, competition with bacteria found naturally in the water, predation by protozoa and other small organisms, and entrapment in pore spaces may all contribute to their demise. We assume that pathogens similar to the fecal indicator bacteria die at the same rate as fecal indicator bacteria. Therefore, if we find relatively high numbers of fecal indicator bacteria in an environment, we assume that there is an increased likelihood of pathogens being present as well. This is even true of water, which has undergone treatment for drinking water purposes. The knowledge of enteric bacteria survival kinetic is very important for environmental scientists. For this purpose there are in present use various empirical formulas but the drawback of these formulas is their limited validity. Experience has shown that the results of calculations of this type may lack accuracy. The purpose of this scientific work was to express the survival kinetic of E.coli with a simple formula, which should be applicable, both to the solution of engineering problems and to future research.     

Enthalpy relaxation studies in isotactic polystyrene. Effects of crystallinity

Summary The enthalpy relaxation of the amorphus isotactic polystyrene is strongly affected from the crystalline phase induced by annealing at temperatures between Tg and Tm. All the parameters describing the relaxation process, H, T_max and T_ons depend also on the above T_g annealing conditions as the induced crystallinity alters the quantity and the quality (i.e.Tg, T_gons, T_g) of the remaining amorphous phase.     

Enhancing the performance of solar cells via luminescent down-shifting of the incident spectrum: A review

The application of a luminescent down-shifting (LDS) layer has been proposed as a method for improving the poor spectral response (SR) of solar cells to short-wavelength light. The LDS layer absorbs photons, typically in the 300-500 nm range, and re-emits them at a longer wavelength where the photovoltaic (PV) device exhibits a significantly better response. This paper reviews the progress in this area over the last three decades, starting from early experiments that yielded promising results but being limited by the luminescent materials available at the time, to modern materials that exhibit higher luminescent quantum efficiencies and better photostability. The candidate materials are considered and their potential is reviewed for a wide range of PV technologies. A particular opportunity is the ability to use the existing polymer encapsulation layer of certain PV technologies as a LDS layer as well.     

Compute and Memory Efficient Universal Sound Source Separation

Journal of Signal Processing Systems - Recent progress in audio source separation led by deep learning has enabled many neural network models to provide robust solutions to this fundamental...     

Understanding the impact of texture on the micromechanical anisotropy of laser powder bed fused Inconel 718

Journal of Materials Science - The manufacturability of metallic alloys using laser-based additive manufacturing methods such as laser powder bed fusion has substantially improved within the last...     

A Semi-Parametric Non-linear Neural Network Filter: Theory and Empirical Evidence

In this work, we decompose a time series into trend and cycle by introducing a novel de-trending approach based on a family of semi-parametric artificial neural networks. Based on this powerful approach, we propose a relevant filter and show that the proposed trend specification is a global approximation to any arbitrary trend. Furthermore, we prove formally a famous claim by Kydland and Prescott (1981, 1997) that over long time periods, the average value of the cycles is zero. A simple procedure for the econometric estimation of the model is developed as a seven-step algorithm, which relies on standard techniques, where all relevant measures may be computed routinely. Next, using relevant DGPs, we compare and show by means of Monte Carlo simulations that our approach is superior to Hodrick–Prescott (HP) and Baxter and King (BK) regarding the generated distortionary effects and the ability to operate in various frequencies, including changes in volatility, amplitudes and phase. In fact, while keeping the structure of the model relatively simple, our approach is perfectly capable of addressing the case of stochastic trend, in the sense that the generated distortionary effects in the near unit root case are minimal and, by all means, considerably fewer than those generated by HP and BK. Application to EU15 business cycles clustering is presented and the empirical results are consistent with the rigorous theoretical framework developed in this work.     

Effects of two combined monophasic and triphasic ethinylestradiol/gestodene oral contraceptives on natural inhibitors and other hemostatic variables

The aneuploid with isochromosome or telochromosome is ideal material for exploring the position of centromere in lingkage map. For obtaining these aneuploids in rice, the primary trisomics from triplo-1 to triplo-12 and the aneuploids derived from a triploid of indica rice variety Zhongxian 3037 were carefully investigated. From the offsprings of triplo-10, a primary trisomic of chromosome 10 of the variety, an isotetrasomic "triplo-10-1" was obtained. Cytological investigation revealed that a pair of extra isochromosomes of triplo-10-1 were come from the short arm of chromosome 10. In the offsprings of the isotetrasomic, a secondary trisomic "triplo-10-2", in which the extra- chromosome was an isochromosome derived from the short arm of chromosome 10, was identified. With the isotetrasomic, secondary trisomic, primary trisomic and diploid of variety Zhongxian 3037, different molecular markers were used for exploring the position of the centromere of chromosome 10. Based on the DNA dosage effect, it was verified that the molecular markers G1125, G333 and L169 were located on the short arm, G1084 and other 16 available molecular markers were on the long arm of chromosome 10. So the centromere of chromosome 10 was located somewhere between G1125 and G1084 according to the RFLP linkage map given by Kurata et al[1]. The distance from G1125 to G1084 was about 3.2 cM.