A Comparison Of The Frequency Of Occurrence Of Stereotypic Behaviors Demonstrated By A Youth With Autism During Two Recreation Activities: Horseback Riding and Board Game Play

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to compare the frequency of occurrence of stereotypic behaviors demonstrated by a youth with autism during two recreation activities: horseback riding and board game play.. Stereotypic behaviors are one of the three diagnostic criteria for autism as listed in the DSM IV and can impact an individual\u27s functional abilities by interfering with learning and daily social behaviors. This study examined the frequency of occurrence of stereotypic behaviors in two different recreation activities. Despite the increase of attention and press coverage autism has received in recent years, there still remains a multitude of questions about the disorder. Many of the traditional therapy approaches do not address the multifaceted aspects of autism, and leave the individual\u27s treatment plan incomplete. Alternative therapies, such as animal-assisted therapy, have shown to be beneficial for individuals with autism by increasing attention, on task behavior, and prosocial behavior, while reducing maladaptive behaviors. Therapeutic horseback riding is a type of animal-assisted therapy, which has shown to benefit individuals with various physical disabilities but has yet to be documented for individuals with autism

Recognizing and forecasting the sign of financial local trends using hidden Markov models

The problem of forecasting financial time series has received great attention in the past, from both Econometrics and Pattern Recognition researchers. In this context, most of the efforts were spent to represent and model the volatility of the financial indicators in long time series. In this paper a different problem is faced, the prediction of increases and decreases in short (local) financial trends. This problem, poorly considered by the researchers, needs specific models, able to capture the movement in the short time and the asymmetries between increase and decrease periods. The methodology presented in this paper explicitly considers both aspects, encoding the financial returns in binary values (representing the signs of the returns), which are subsequently modelled using two separate Hidden Markov models, one for increases and one for decreases, respectively. The approach has been tested with different experiments with the Dow Jones index and other shares of the same market of different risk, with encouraging results

Backscatter from the Data Plane --- Threats to Stability and Security in Information-Centric Networking

Information-centric networking proposals attract much attention in the ongoing search for a future communication paradigm of the Internet. Replacing the host-to-host connectivity by a data-oriented publish/subscribe service eases content distribution and authentication by concept, while eliminating threats from unwanted traffic at an end host as are common in today's Internet. However, current approaches to content routing heavily rely on data-driven protocol events and thereby introduce a strong coupling of the control to the data plane in the underlying routing infrastructure. In this paper, threats to the stability and security of the content distribution system are analyzed in theory and practical experiments. We derive relations between state resources and the performance of routers and demonstrate how this coupling can be misused in practice. We discuss new attack vectors present in its current state of development, as well as possibilities and limitations to mitigate them.Comment: 15 page

Vintage capital and the dynamics of the AK model

This paper analyzes the equilibrium dynamics of an AK-type endogenous growth model with vintage capital. The inclusion of vintage capital leads to oscillatory dynamics governed by replacement echoes, which additionally influence the intercept of the balanced growth path. These features, which are in sharp contrast to those from the standard AK model, can contribute to explaining the short-run deviations observed between investment and growth rates time series. To characterize the optimal solutions of the model we develop analytical and numerical methods that should be of interest for the general resolution of endogenous growth models with vintage capital.Endogenous growth, Vintage capital, AK model, Differencedifferential equations