Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 313)

This bibliography lists 227 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in July, 1988

Taxonomy of Human Actions for Action-based Learning Assessment in Virtual Training Environments

This design research project developed and validated a taxonomy of human actions to be used in action-based learning assessment. The taxonomy, titled ‘BEHAVE,’ was shown to have both internal and external validity and allows actions performed by learners, for example in digital performance spaces, to be formally represented with consistency and to be compared with expert reference actions, to generate automated post-performance formative feedback

The production of subjects and everyday life in neoliberal capitalism

Among scholars of neoliberal capitalism, it is commonly noted that neoliberalism shapes human subjectivity. In this thesis, I address this relationship between neoliberal capitalism and subjectivity. I argue that the neoliberalisation of subjectivity and everyday life is central to neoliberalism’s embeddedness. I offer a critical account of what Wendy Brown describes as the neoliberal production of subjects. As I will claim, the production of neoliberal subjects is in part the consequence of applying economic categories and market-like principles and practices to all aspects of human life. To clarify the relationship between neoliberalism and subjectivity, I examine the notion of human capital, which has been pivotal to articulations of neoliberal selfhood. I also critically assess a range of management literature and practices that promote the optimisation of the neoliberal subject’s human capital. Additionally, I contend that neoliberal discourse and practices shape our working lives, both in and outside of formal work settings. My aim is to elucidate the economic and social conditions and the ideological field that have brought about the imperfect yet extensive neoliberalisation of selfhood

Eye quietness and quiet eye in expert and novice golf performance: an electrooculographic analysis

Quiet eye (QE) is the final ocular fixation on the target of an action (e.g., the ball in golf putting). Camerabased eye-tracking studies have consistently found longer QE durations in experts than novices; however, mechanisms underlying QE are not known. To offer a new perspective we examined the feasibility of measuring the QE using electrooculography (EOG) and developed an index to assess ocular activity across time: eye quietness (EQ). Ten expert and ten novice golfers putted 60 balls to a 2.4 m distant hole. Horizontal EOG (2ms resolution) was recorded from two electrodes placed on the outer sides of the eyes. QE duration was measured using a EOG voltage threshold and comprised the sum of the pre-movement and post-movement initiation components. EQ was computed as the standard deviation of the EOG in 0.5 s bins from –4 to +2 s, relative to backswing initiation: lower values indicate less movement of the eyes, hence greater quietness. Finally, we measured club-ball address and swing durations. T-tests showed that total QE did not differ between groups (p = .31); however, experts had marginally shorter pre-movement QE (p = .08) and longer post-movement QE (p < .001) than novices. A group × time ANOVA revealed that experts had less EQ before backswing initiation and greater EQ after backswing initiation (p = .002). QE durations were inversely correlated with EQ from –1.5 to 1 s (rs = –.48 - –.90, ps = .03 - .001). Experts had longer swing durations than novices (p = .01) and, importantly, swing durations correlated positively with post-movement QE (r = .52, p = .02) and negatively with EQ from 0.5 to 1s (r = –.63, p = .003). This study demonstrates the feasibility of measuring ocular activity using EOG and validates EQ as an index of ocular activity. Its findings challenge the dominant perspective on QE and provide new evidence that expert-novice differences in ocular activity may reflect differences in the kinematics of how experts and novices execute skills

Software Usability

This volume delivers a collection of high-quality contributions to help broaden developers’ and non-developers’ minds alike when it comes to considering software usability. It presents novel research and experiences and disseminates new ideas accessible to people who might not be software makers but who are undoubtedly software users

Change blindness: eradication of gestalt strategies

Arrays of eight, texture-defined rectangles were used as stimuli in a one-shot change blindness (CB) task where there was a 50% chance that one rectangle would change orientation between two successive presentations separated by an interval. CB was eliminated by cueing the target rectangle in the first stimulus, reduced by cueing in the interval and unaffected by cueing in the second presentation. This supports the idea that a representation was formed that persisted through the interval before being 'overwritten' by the second presentation (Landman et al, 2003 Vision Research 43149–164]. Another possibility is that participants used some kind of grouping or Gestalt strategy. To test this we changed the spatial position of the rectangles in the second presentation by shifting them along imaginary spokes (by ±1 degree) emanating from the central fixation point. There was no significant difference seen in performance between this and the standard task [F(1,4)=2.565, p=0.185]. This may suggest two things: (i) Gestalt grouping is not used as a strategy in these tasks, and (ii) it gives further weight to the argument that objects may be stored and retrieved from a pre-attentional store during this task

The Effects of Subanaesthetic Doses of Isoflurane and Enflurane on the Auditory Evoked Response and Two Tests of Psychometric Performance

We investigated the effects of subanaesthetic doses of isoflurane and enflurane on the auditory evoked response, and two tests of psychoraotor performance, the choice reaction time and tracking task. The use of subanaesthetic doses of isoflurane has been used for dental sedation. Thirty fasting volunteers (mean age 24y) had scalp electrodes placed at vertex and both mastoids. Fifteen were randomly allocated to receive doses of isoflurane of inspired concentrations (0, 0.31, 0.5, 0.75%), placebo or enflurane (0, 0.17, 0.42, 0.6%) and 15 received isoflurane (0, 0.2, 0.31, 0.4%) or placebo. At each step change in volatile agent concentration 20min were allowed for equilibration. The reclining volunteers received the gases through a Hudson mask connected to a Bain circuit (flow > 10lmin-1), delivering 30% oxygen in air. Basic physiological variables, heart rate, arterial pressure, axillary temperature, and oxygen saturation were monitored throughout each 2.5h experiment. End-tidal concentrations of carbon dioxide could not be practically measured in these conscious volunteers. Control baseline brainstem, and long latency recordings were made before introducing the volatile agents or placebo. A probability of p s 0.05 was considered significant. The basic physiological variables remained within normal ranges throughout each experiment. The brainstem auditory evoked responses (BSAER) latencies and amplitudes did not change significantly for either drug compared with the placebo, except for the wave V latency which increased significantly at 0.5% isoflurane and 0.42% enflurane. The N100 latency of the long-latency auditory evoked responses (LLAER) increased significantly from the placebo at 0.3, 0.4, 0.5% isoflurane and enflurane 0.42%. The N100 amplitude differed significantly from the placebo at 0.2, 0.3, 0.5% isoflurane and 0.6% enflurane. The N100 latency seems to produce a graded response to isoflurane which might be useful in automatic control of anaesthesia, providing the waveforms can be reliably identified automatically. The two tests of psychometric function were affected by the drugs. Mean reaction times and tracking times increased. The variability of the above two measures increased as measured by the coefficients of variation

Learning to act as a team: developmental onset, underlying processes and pre-requisites of co-representation in early childhood

Co-representation has been argued to be a mechanism in adult joint action that allows participants in a joint task to co-ordinate their actions with a partner. Substantial evidence for this mechanism has come from tasks such as the joint Simon task (Sebanz, Knoblich & Prinz, 2003), which show interference from a partner’s task on one’s own performance. The following studies aim to use this mechanism as a measure of children’s joint action abilities and a way of directly comparing adult and child behaviours. Chapter 1 presents three studies which suggest a developmental onset of co-representation effects at around 4 years old. Chapter 2 attempts to uncover what type of representations may be formed in joint tasks at this age. Chapter 3 presents an individual differences study, suggesting that both Inhibitory Control and explicit Theory of Mind, but not Working Memory, play an indirect role in avoiding interference from co-representation. These findings contribute to the Joint Action Development literature, by demonstrating at least one way in which adult and child joint action may not be comparable. They also shed light on the adult co-representation literature, by highlighting cognitive skills that may interact with co-representation in order to reduce potential interference

Managing Requirement Volatility in an Ontology-Driven Clinical LIMS Using Category Theory. International Journal of Telemedicine and Applications

Requirement volatility is an issue in software engineering in general, and in Web-based clinical applications in particular, which often originates from an incomplete knowledge of the domain of interest. With advances in the health science, many features and functionalities need to be added to, or removed from, existing software applications in the biomedical domain. At the same time, the increasing complexity of biomedical systems makes them more difficult to understand, and consequently it is more difficult to define their requirements, which contributes considerably to their volatility. In this paper, we present a novel agent-based approach for analyzing and managing volatile and dynamic requirements in an ontology-driven laboratory information management system (LIMS) designed for Web-based case reporting in medical mycology. The proposed framework is empowered with ontologies and formalized using category theory to provide a deep and common understanding of the functional and nonfunctional requirement hierarchies and their interrelations, and to trace the effects of a change on the conceptual framework.Comment: 36 Pages, 16 Figure