Word length and lexical activation: Longer is better.

Many models of spoken word recognition posit the existence of lexical and sublexical representations, with excitatory and inhibitory mechanisms used to affect the activation levels of such representations. Bottom-up evidence provides excitatory input, and inhibition from phonetically similar representations leads to lexical competition. In such a system, long words should produce stronger lexical activation than short words, for 2 reasons: Long words provide more bottom-up evidence than short words, and short words are subject to greater inhibition due to the existence of more similar words. Four experiments provide evidence for this view. In addition, reaction-time-based partitioning of the data shows that long words generate greater activation that is available both earlier and for a longer time than is the case for short words. As a result, lexical influences on phoneme identification are extremely robust for long words but are quite fragile and condition-dependent for short words. Models of word recognition must consider words of all lengths to capture the true dynamics of lexical activation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

附录：PortletConfig对象详解

本部分将讲述PortletConfig对象及其PortletContext对象的概念及应用。     

Macroscopic analysis of design processes based on a scheme for coding designers' cognitive actions

We have devised a new scheme for coding designers' cognitive actions from video/audio design protocols. Designers' actions are coded into four cognitive levels; physical, perceptual, functional and conceptual. Relations between actions belonging to different levels, such as dependencies and triggering relations, are also coded. The present scheme has two benefits. First, we found that design actions are definable in a systematic way using the vocabulary of the scheme, and thus a designer's cognitive behaviours in each of local design stages is represented as a structure composed of defined primitive actions. This is expected to lay the foundation for microscopic analyses of how particular types of actions contribute to the formation of key design ideas. Second, this scheme is suitable for macroscopic analyses of how designers cognitively interact with their own sketches. We examined, for a practising architect, the ways in which drawing, inspection of drawings, perception, and functional thoughts correlated with one another in his design process. The findings suggest that design sketches serve not only as external memory or as a provider of visual cues for association of non-visual information, but also as a physical setting in which design thoughts are constructed on the fly.     

Vote counting measures for ensemble classifiers

Various measures, such as Margin and Bias/Variance, have been proposed with the aim of gaining a better understanding of why Multiple Classifier Systems (MCS) perform as well as they do. While these measures provide different perspectives for MCS analysis, it is not clear how to use them for MCS design. In this paper a different measure based on a spectral representation is proposed for two-class problems. It incorporates terms representing positive and negative correlation of pairs of training patterns with respect to class labels. Experiments employing MLP base classifiers, in which parameters are fixed but systematically varied, demonstrate the sensitivity of the proposed measure to base classifier complexity.     

Investigation of bounds on particle packing in pebble-bed high temperature reactors

Models and methods are presented for determining practical limits of the packing density of TRISO particles in fuel pebbles for a pebble-bed reactor (PBR). These models are devised for designing and interpreting fuel testing experiments. Two processes for particle failure are accounted for: failure of touching particles at the pressing stage in the pebble manufacturing process and failure due to inner pressure buildup during irradiation. The second process gains importance with increasing fuel temperature, which limits the particle packing density and the corresponding fuel enrichment. Suggestions for improvements to the models are presented.     

Lattice Constants of Boron Carbides

The lattice constants of boron carbides have been determined by powder X-ray diffraction for samples with compositions between about 7.7 and 20.5 at.% carbon. The boundaries of the single-phase region are at about 9 at.% carbon and near, but likely somewhat less than, 20 at.% carbon. The composition dependence of the lattice constants thus established provides a method of assessing the carbon concentration of unknown materials. In particular, assignment of the approximate composition of single crystals used in previous studies allows for a systematic examination of changes in interatomic separation as a function of composition. These changes are discussed in terms of a structural model of the boron carbide solid solution.     

Development of the Multicultural Counseling Inventory: A self-report measure of multicultural competencies.

Presents the Multicultural Counseling Inventory (MCI), a self-report instrument that measures multicultural counseling competencies. Study 1 comprised 604 psychology students, psychologists, and counselors in a midwestern state. In Study 2, respondents were a national random sample of 320 university counselors. Instrument analysis included exploratory principal-axis factor analysis with oblique rotation, assessment of factor congruence between the factor structures of the 2 samples, LISREL confirmatory factor analysis to test the relative goodness of fit of 6 competing factor models of the MCI, and tests of internal consistency reliabilities. Results indicate that the MCI has 4 factors: Multicultural Counseling Skills, Multicultural Awareness, Multicultural Counseling Relationship, and Multicultural Counseling Knowledge. A higher order, more general multicultural counseling factor is also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Approximating the problem, not the solution: An alternative view of point set matching

This work discusses the issue of approximation in point set matching. In general, one may have two classes of approximations when tackling a matching problem: (1) an algorithmic approximation which consists in using suboptimal procedures to infer the assignment, and (2), a representational approximation which involves a simplified and suboptimal model for the original data. Matching techniques have typically relied on the first approach by retaining the complete model and using suboptimal techniques to solve it. In this paper, we show how a technique based on using exact inference in simple Graphical Models, an instance of the second class, can significantly outperform instances of techniques from the first class. We experimentally compare this method with well-known Spectral and Relaxation methods, which are exemplars of the first class. We have performed experiments with synthetic and real-world data sets which reveal significant performance improvement in a wide operating range.     

Information Assurance Technology Forecast 2008

A virtual roundtable (featuring panelists Steven Bellovin, Terry Benzel, Bob Blakely, Dorothy Denning, Whitfield Diffie, Jeremy Epstein, and Paulo Verissimo) discussing the next 15 years in computer security.     

Table-Free Bridging

Simple interconnection of high-speed local area networks (LAN's) can be accomplished without special technology through the use of table-free bridges. Self-guided frame routing allows frames to trace specific routes through bridged LAN's without requiring bridges to maintain address tables or perform table lookups. As a result, the technique applies to networks regardless of their operating speed or topological configuration and requires no interbridge protocols. The paper discusses a method known as source routing that provides tablefree bridging and self-guided frame routing for LAN's. Participation by the bridges that interconnect pairs of LAN's and by the stations whose frames they forward is described. Possible frame formats are shown as enhancements to the standard frame formats of the IEEE 802 and ISO 8802 local area networks.