10,668 research outputs found
Dandelion Diagram: Aggregating Positioning and Orientation Data in the Visualization of Classroom Proxemics
In the past two years, an emerging body of HCI work has been focused on
classroom proxemics - how teachers divide time and attention over students in
the different regions of the classroom. Tracking and visualizing this implicit
yet relevant dimension of teaching can benefit both research and teacher
professionalization. Prior work has proved the value of depicting teachers'
whereabouts. Yet a major opportunity remains in the design of new, synthesized
visualizations that help researchers and practitioners to gain more insights in
the vast tracking data. We present Dandelion Diagram, a synthesized heatmap
technique that combines both teachers' positioning and orientation (heading)
data, and affords richer representations in addition to whereabouts - For
example, teachers' attention pattern (which directions they were attending to),
and their mobility pattern (i.e., trajectories in the classroom). Utilizing
various classroom data from a field study, this paper illustrates the design
and utility of Dandelion Diagram.Comment: To be published in CHI'20 Extended Abstracts (April 25-30, 2020), 8
pages, 4 figure
Integral chain management of wildlife diseases
The chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis has caused the most prominent loss of vertebrate diversity ever recorded, which peaked in the 1980s. Recent incursion by its sister species B. salamandrivorans in Europe raised the alarm for a new wave of declines and extinctions in western Palearctic urodeles. The European Commission has responded by restricting amphibian trade. However, private amphibian collections, the main end consumers, were exempted from the European legislation. Here, we report how invasion by a released, exotic newt coincided with B. salamandrivorans invasion at over 1000 km from the nearest natural outbreak site, causing mass mortality in indigenous marbled newts (Triturus marmoratus), and posing an acute threat to the survival of nearby populations of the most critically endangered European newt species (Montseny brook newt, Calotriton arnoldi). Disease management was initiated shortly after detection in a close collaboration between policy and science and included drastic on site measures and intensive disease surveillance. Despite these efforts, the disease is considered temporarily contained but not eradicated and continued efforts will be necessary to minimize the probability of further pathogen dispersal. This precedent demonstrates the importance of tackling wildlife diseases at an early stage using an integrated approach, involving all stakeholders and closing loopholes in existing regulations
Neutron-proton bremsstrahlung from intermediate energy heavy-ion reactions as a probe of the nuclear symmetry energy?
Hard photons from neutron-proton bremsstrahlung in intermediate energy
heavy-ion reactions are examined as a potential probe of the nuclear symmetry
energy within a transport model. Effects of the symmetry energy on the yields
and spectra of hard photons are found to be generally smaller than those due to
the currently existing uncertainties of both the in-medium nucleon-nucleon
cross sections and the photon production probability in the elementary process
. Very interestingly, nevertheless, the ratio of hard photon
spectra from two reactions using isotopes of the same element
is not only approximately independent of these uncertainties but also quite
sensitive to the symmetry energy. For the head-on reactions of
and at MeV, for
example, the displays a rise up to 15% when the symmetry
energy is reduced by about 20% at which is the maximum density
reached in these reactions.Comment: Added new results in Fig. 6 and new references [27.28]. Phys. Lett. B
in pres
Preoperative Exercise during Neoadjuvant Therapy for Pancreatic Cancer: A Pilot Study
Exercise improves cancer treatment outcomes including health-related quality of life and physical functioning. Patients with pancreatic cancer are generally older adults, and frailty and cachexia are prevalent. Chemotherapy and chemoradiation are increasingly administered prior to pancreatic cancer surgery, and sarcopenia has been shown to accompany these therapies. Preoperative exercise may improve health, well-being, and perioperative outcomes among patients undergoing preoperative therapy for pancreatic cancer. The purpose of this pilot study was to determine the feasibility of exercise in this context. Feasibility was defined as patients completing, on average, 60% of recommended weekly exercise minutes. Twenty patients (M=64 years old, SD=9.9; 42% female) enrolled in a home-based exercise program during preoperative therapy (chemotherapy and/or chemoradiation and preoperative “rest”, M=21.2 weeks total, SD=16.4). Exercise recommendations included moderate-intensity walking for 20-30 minutes/day on ≥3 days/week and moderate-intensity resistance exercises for 30-45 minutes/day on ≥2 days/week. Exercise recommendations (120 minutes of moderate-intensity activity/week) were based on American College of Sports Medicine and American Cancer Society recommendations (150 minutes of moderate-intensity activity/week), but reduced due to patients’ older age and concurrent preoperative therapy. Resistance exercises targeted upper body, lower body, and abdominal muscles, and patients were instructed to perform 3 sets of 8-12 repetitions of multiple exercises for each region during each session. Patients received Yamax Digiwalker pedometers, graded resistance tube sets, and booklets and DVDs with instructions and safety tips. Research staff provided detailed instructions and resistance exercise demonstrations at enrollment and monitored and encouraged adherence with biweekly phone calls. Patients recorded minutes of walking and resistance exercise in daily logs. On average, patients reported 73.9 minutes of walking (\u3e100% of recommendation, SD=72.4) and 43.1 minutes of resistance exercise per week (71.8% of recommendation, SD=39.0). Patients reported the most walking during chemoradiation (M=94.7 minutes/week, SD=104.3), followed by preoperative “rest” (M=77.4 minutes/week, SD=80.4), and chemotherapy (M=70.8 minutes/week, SD=75.2). Patients reported the most resistance exercise during the preoperative “rest” period (M=51.6 minutes/week, SD=52.3), followed by chemoradiation (M=38.0 minutes/week, SD=36.8), and chemotherapy (M=31.1 minutes/week, SD=38.1). Walking and resistance exercise are feasible for patients undergoing preoperative therapy for pancreatic cancer. Varying levels of fatigue and treatment-related side effects may affect exercise during different treatment phases
Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy in MgB 2
We present extensive Scanning Tunneling Spectroscopy (STM/S) measurements at
low temperatures in the multiband superconductor MgB. We find a similar
behavior in single crystalline samples and in single grains, which clearly
shows the partial superconducting density of states of both the and
bands of this material. The superconducting gaps corresponding to both
bands are not single valued. Instead, we find a distribution of superconducting
gaps centered around 1.9mV and 7.5mV, corresponding respectively to each set of
bands. Interband scattering effects, leading to a single gap structure at 4mV
and a smaller critical temperature can be observed in some locations on the
surface. S-S junctions formed by pieces of MgB attached to the tip clearly
show the subharmonic gap structure associated with this type of junctions. We
discuss future developments and possible new effects associated with the
multiband nature of superconductivity in this compound.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Physica
Distributed Sensing, Computing, Communication, and Control Fabric: A Unified Service-Level Architecture for 6G
With the advent of the multimodal immersive communication system, people can
interact with each other using multiple devices for sensing, communication
and/or control either onsite or remotely. As a breakthrough concept, a
distributed sensing, computing, communications, and control (DS3C) fabric is
introduced in this paper for provisioning 6G services in multi-tenant
environments in a unified manner. The DS3C fabric can be further enhanced by
natively incorporating intelligent algorithms for network automation and
managing networking, computing, and sensing resources efficiently to serve
vertical use cases with extreme and/or conflicting requirements. As such, the
paper proposes a novel end-to-end 6G system architecture with enhanced
intelligence spanning across different network, computing, and business
domains, identifies vertical use cases and presents an overview of the relevant
standardization and pre-standardization landscape
A Complete Spectroscopic Survey of the Milky Way Satellite Segue 1: The Darkest Galaxy
We present the results of a comprehensive Keck/DEIMOS spectroscopic survey of
the ultra-faint Milky Way satellite galaxy Segue 1. We have obtained velocity
measurements for 98.2% of the stars within 67 pc (10 arcmin, or 2.3 half-light
radii) of the center of Segue 1 that have colors and magnitudes consistent with
membership, down to a magnitude limit of r=21.7. Based on photometric,
kinematic, and metallicity information, we identify 71 stars as probable Segue
1 members, including some as far out as 87 pc. After correcting for the
influence of binary stars using repeated velocity measurements, we determine a
velocity dispersion of 3.7^{+1.4}_{-1.1} km/s, with a corresponding mass within
the half-light radius of 5.8^{+8.2}_{-3.1} x 10^5 Msun. The stellar kinematics
of Segue 1 require very high mass-to-light ratios unless the system is far from
dynamical equilibrium, even if the period distribution of unresolved binary
stars is skewed toward implausibly short periods. With a total luminosity less
than that of a single bright red giant and a V-band mass-to-light ratio of 3400
Msun/Lsun, Segue 1 is the darkest galaxy currently known. We critically
re-examine recent claims that Segue 1 is a tidally disrupting star cluster and
that kinematic samples are contaminated by the Sagittarius stream. The
extremely low metallicities ([Fe/H] < -3) of two Segue 1 stars and the large
metallicity spread among the members demonstrate conclusively that Segue 1 is a
dwarf galaxy, and we find no evidence in favor of tidal effects. We also show
that contamination by the Sagittarius stream has been overestimated. Segue 1
has the highest measured dark matter density of any known galaxy and will
therefore be a prime testing ground for dark matter physics and galaxy
formation on small scales.Comment: 24 pages, 4 tables, 11 figures (10 in color). Submitted for
publication in ApJ. V3 revised according to comments from the refere
A model of decay
We suggest a parameterization of the matrix element for decay using kinematic variables convenient for experimental
analysis. The contributions of intermediate - and -states up
to spin 3 have been taken into account. The angular distributions for each
discussed hypothesis have been obtained and analysed using Monte-Carlo
simulation.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, 1 table; V2: text in some places improved and
acknowledgments adde
Aidnogenesis via Leptogenesis and Dark Sphalerons
We discuss aidnogenesis, the generation of a dark matter asymmetry via new
sphaleron processes associated to an extra non-abelian gauge symmetry common to
both the visible and the dark sectors. Such a theory can naturally produce an
abundance of asymmetric dark matter which is of the same size as the lepton and
baryon asymmetries, as suggested by the similar sizes of the observed baryonic
and dark matter energy content, and provide a definite prediction for the mass
of the dark matter particle. We discuss in detail a minimal realization in
which the Standard Model is only extended by dark matter fermions which form
"dark baryons" through an SU(3) interaction, and a (broken) horizontal symmetry
that induces the new sphalerons. The dark matter mass is predicted to be
approximately 6 GeV, close to the region favored by DAMA and CoGeNT.
Furthermore, a remnant of the horizontal symmetry should be broken at a lower
scale and can also explain the Tevatron dimuon anomaly.Comment: Minor changes, discussion of present constraints expanded. 16 pages,
2 eps figures, REVTeX
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