517,230 research outputs found
Communicative-Pragmatic Assessment Is Sensitive and Time-Effective in Measuring the Outcome of Aphasia Therapy
A range of methods in clinical research aim to assess treatment-induced
progress in aphasia therapy. Here, we used a crossover randomized controlled
design to compare the suitability of utterance-centered and dialogue-sensitive
outcome measures in speech-language testing. Fourteen individuals with post-
stroke chronic non-fluent aphasia each received two types of intensive
training in counterbalanced order: conventional confrontation naming, and
communicative-pragmatic speech-language therapy (Intensive Language-Action
Therapy, an expanded version of Constraint-Induced Aphasia Therapy). Motivated
by linguistic-pragmatic theory and neuroscience data, our dependent variables
included a newly created diagnostic instrument, the Action Communication Test
(ACT). This diagnostic instrument requires patients to produce target words in
two conditions: (i) utterance-centered object naming, and (ii) communicative-
pragmatic social interaction based on verbal requests. In addition, we
administered a standardized aphasia test battery, the Aachen Aphasia Test
(AAT). Composite scores on the ACT and the AAT revealed similar patterns of
changes in language performance over time, irrespective of the treatment
applied. Changes in language performance were relatively consistent with the
AAT results also when considering both ACT subscales separately from each
other. However, only the ACT subscale evaluating verbal requests proved to be
successful in distinguishing between different types of training in our
patient sample. Critically, testing duration was substantially shorter for the
entire ACT (10–20 min) than for the AAT (60–90 min). Taken together, the
current findings suggest that communicative-pragmatic methods in speech-
language testing provide a sensitive and time-effective measure to determine
the outcome of aphasia therapy
P4CEP: Towards In-Network Complex Event Processing
In-network computing using programmable networking hardware is a strong trend
in networking that promises to reduce latency and consumption of server
resources through offloading to network elements (programmable switches and
smart NICs). In particular, the data plane programming language P4 together
with powerful P4 networking hardware has spawned projects offloading services
into the network, e.g., consensus services or caching services. In this paper,
we present a novel case for in-network computing, namely, Complex Event
Processing (CEP). CEP processes streams of basic events, e.g., stemming from
networked sensors, into meaningful complex events. Traditionally, CEP
processing has been performed on servers or overlay networks. However, we argue
in this paper that CEP is a good candidate for in-network computing along the
communication path avoiding detouring streams to distant servers to minimize
communication latency while also exploiting processing capabilities of novel
networking hardware. We show that it is feasible to express CEP operations in
P4 and also present a tool to compile CEP operations, formulated in our P4CEP
rule specification language, to P4 code. Moreover, we identify challenges and
problems that we have encountered to show future research directions for
implementing full-fledged in-network CEP systems.Comment: 6 pages. Author's versio
The C++0x "Concepts" Effort
C++0x is the working title for the revision of the ISO standard of the C++
programming language that was originally planned for release in 2009 but that
was delayed to 2011. The largest language extension in C++0x was "concepts",
that is, a collection of features for constraining template parameters. In
September of 2008, the C++ standards committee voted the concepts extension
into C++0x, but then in July of 2009, the committee voted the concepts
extension back out of C++0x.
This article is my account of the technical challenges and debates within the
"concepts" effort in the years 2003 to 2009. To provide some background, the
article also describes the design space for constrained parametric
polymorphism, or what is colloquially know as constrained generics. While this
article is meant to be generally accessible, the writing is aimed toward
readers with background in functional programming and programming language
theory. This article grew out of a lecture at the Spring School on Generic and
Indexed Programming at the University of Oxford, March 2010
Real-time and fault tolerance in distributed control software
Closed loop control systems typically contain multitude of spatially distributed sensors and actuators operated simultaneously. So those systems are parallel and distributed in their essence. But mapping this parallelism onto the given distributed hardware architecture, brings in some additional requirements: safe multithreading, optimal process allocation, real-time scheduling of bus and network resources. Nowadays, fault tolerance methods and fast even online reconfiguration are becoming increasingly important. All those often conflicting requirements, make design and implementation of real-time distributed control systems an extremely difficult task, that requires substantial knowledge in several areas of control and computer science. Although many design methods have been proposed so far, none of them had succeeded to cover all important aspects of the problem at hand. [1] Continuous increase of production in embedded market, makes a simple and natural design methodology for real-time systems needed more then ever
SL: a "quick and dirty" but working intermediate language for SVP systems
The CSA group at the University of Amsterdam has developed SVP, a framework
to manage and program many-core and hardware multithreaded processors. In this
article, we introduce the intermediate language SL, a common vehicle to program
SVP platforms. SL is designed as an extension to the standard C language (ISO
C99/C11). It includes primitive constructs to bulk create threads, bulk
synchronize on termination of threads, and communicate using word-sized
dataflow channels between threads. It is intended for use as target language
for higher-level parallelizing compilers. SL is a research vehicle; as of this
writing, it is the only interface language to program a main SVP platform, the
new Microgrid chip architecture. This article provides an overview of the
language, to complement a detailed specification available separately.Comment: 22 pages, 3 figures, 18 listings, 1 tabl
A Computer-Based Method to Improve the Spelling of Children with Dyslexia
In this paper we present a method which aims to improve the spelling of
children with dyslexia through playful and targeted exercises. In contrast to
previous approaches, our method does not use correct words or positive examples
to follow, but presents the child a misspelled word as an exercise to solve. We
created these training exercises on the basis of the linguistic knowledge
extracted from the errors found in texts written by children with dyslexia. To
test the effectiveness of this method in Spanish, we integrated the exercises
in a game for iPad, DysEggxia (Piruletras in Spanish), and carried out a
within-subject experiment. During eight weeks, 48 children played either
DysEggxia or Word Search, which is another word game. We conducted tests and
questionnaires at the beginning of the study, after four weeks when the games
were switched, and at the end of the study. The children who played DysEggxia
for four weeks in a row had significantly less writing errors in the tests that
after playing Word Search for the same time. This provides evidence that
error-based exercises presented in a tablet help children with dyslexia improve
their spelling skills.Comment: 8 pages, ASSETS'14, October 20-22, 2014, Rochester, NY, US
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