Auditory and Spatial Assessment in Inattentive Children Using Smart Devices and Gesture Interaction

We present an interactive game for assessing auditory and spatial memory. We compared the performance of children with and without inattention using the game and using a variety of classical tools for assessment of auditory and spatial memory. The children with inattention showed statistically worse performance in the game. There were no statistically significant differences between the two groups for the satisfaction and interaction outcomes. Therefore, our game could be a good tool for distinguishing performances of children with and without inattention

A virtual object-location task for children: Gender and videogame experience influence navigation; age impacts memory and completion time

The use of virtual reality-based tasks for studying memory has increased considerably. Most of the studies that have looked at child population factors that influence performance on such tasks have been focused on cognitive variables. However, little attention has been paid to the impact of non-cognitive skills. In the present paper, we tested 52 typically-developing children aged 5-12 years in a virtual object-location task. The task assessed their spatial short-term memory for the location of three objects in a virtual city. The virtual task environment was presented using a 3D application consisting of a 120" stereoscopic screen and a gamepad interface. Measures of learning and displacement indicators in the virtual environment, 3D perception, satisfaction, and usability were obtained. We assessed the children's videogame experience, their visuospatial span, their ability to build blocks, and emotional and behavioral outcomes. The results indicate that learning improved with age. Significant effects on the speed of navigation were found favoring boys and those more experienced with videogames. Visuospatial skills correlated mainly with ability to recall object positions, but the correlation was weak. Longer paths were related with higher scores of withdrawal behavior, attention problems, and a lower visuospatial span. Aggressiveness and experience with the device used for interaction were related with faster navigation. However, the correlations indicated only weak associations among these variables

Harmonic index and harmonic polynomial on graph operations

Some years ago, the harmonic polynomial was introduced to study the harmonic topological index. Here, using this polynomial, we obtain several properties of the harmonic index of many classical symmetric operations of graphs: Cartesian product, corona product, join, Cartesian sum and lexicographic product. Some upper and lower bounds for the harmonic indices of these operations of graphs, in terms of related indices, are derived from known bounds on the integral of a product on nonnegative convex functions. Besides, we provide an algorithm that computes the harmonic polynomial with complexity O(n 2 ).This work was supported in part by two grants from Ministerio de Economía y Competititvidad, Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER) (MTM2016-78227-C2-1-P and MTM2017-90584-REDT), Spain

Design and Evaluation of a Virtual Quadrant Receiver for 4-ary Pulse Position Modulation/Optical Code Division Multiple Access (4-ary PPM/O-CDMA)

M-ary pulse position modulation (M-ary PPM) is an alternative to on-off-keying (OOK) that transmits multiple bits as a single symbol occupying a frame of M slots. PPM does not require thresholding as in OOK signaling, instead performing a comparison test among all slots in a frame to make the slot decision. Combining PPM with optical code division multiple access (PPM/O-CDMA) adds the benefit of supporting multiple concurrent, asynchronous bursty PPM users. While the advantages of PPM/O-CDMA are well known, implementing a receiver that performs comparison test can be difficult. This paper describes the design of a novel array receiver for M-ary PPM/O-CDMA (M = 4) where the received signal is mapped onto an xy-plane whose quadrants define the PPM slot decision by means of an associated control law. The receiver does not require buffering or nonlinear operations. In this paper we describe a planar lightwave circuit (PLCs) implementation of the receiver. We give detailed numerical simulations that test the concept and investigate the effects of multi-access interference (MAI) and optical beat interference (OBI) on the slot decisions. These simulations provide guidelines for subsequent experimental measurements that will be described

Development of Pulse Position Modulation/Optical CDMA (PPM/O-CDMA) for Gb/s Fiber Optic Networking

Pulse position modulation (PPM) in lasercom systems is known to provide potential advantages over other modulation schemes. [1]. In PPM, a periodic time frame is established and data is transmitted by placing a pulse in any one of several subintervals (or ''slots'') within each frame. In PPM/O-CDMA all users use the same frame structure and each transmits its unique address code in place of the PPM pulse. The advantage of PPM as a pulsed signal format is that (1) a single pulse can transmit multiple bits during each frame; (2) decoding (determining which subinterval contains the pulse) is by comparison rather than threshold tests (as in on-off-keying); (3) each user transmits in only a small fraction of the frame, hence the multi-access interference (MAI) of any user statistically spreads over the entire frame time, reducing the chance of overlap with any other user; and (4) under an average power constraint, increasing frame time increases the peak pulse power (i.e., PPM trades average power for peak power). The most straightforward approach to implementing PPM/O-CDMA data modulator inserts the PPM pulse modulation first, then imposes the O-CDMA coding. A pulsed PPM modulator converts bits (words) into pulse positions. In the case of wavelength/time (W/T) matrix codes, multi-wavelength pulses are generated at the beginning of each frame, at the frame rate. For M-ary PPM, a block of k bits represents M = 2{sup k} unique interval positions in the frame corresponding to M-l specific time delays (the zero delay is also a position). PPM modulation is achieved by shifting the initial pulse into an interval position with delay D(i) (i=0,1,2,..,M-1). The location of a pulse position (selection of a delay) therefore identifies a unique k-bit word in the frame. At the receiver, determining which delay occurs relative to the frame start time decodes the data word. The probability of pulse overlap between two users decreases with M, which therefore decreases the probability of MAI buildup. Spreadsheet simulations suggest that a slot-synchronous M-ary PPM/O-CDMA system will support more concurrent users than a chip-synchronous or frame-synchronous system

Design of a Virtual Quadrant Receiver for 4-ary Pulse Position Modulation/Optical CDMA (4-ary PPM/O-CDMA)

We describe a receiver that performs optical code division multiple access (O-CDMA) decoding followed by pulse position modulation (PPM) symbol detection that behaves like a radar quadrant receiver. Simulations determine the impact of multi-access interference on symbol detection for up to 32 users

H-alpha Kinematics of the SINGS Nearby Galaxies Survey. II

This is the second part of an H-alpha kinematics follow-up survey of the Spitzer Infrared Nearby Galaxies Survey (SINGS) sample. The aim of this program is to shed new light on the role of baryons and their kinematics and on the dark/luminous matter relation in the star forming regions of galaxies, in relation with studies at other wavelengths. The data for 37 galaxies are presented. The observations were made using Fabry-Perot interferometry with the photon-counting camera FaNTOmM on 4 different telescopes, namely the Canada-France-Hawaii 3.6m, the ESO La Silla 3.6m, the William Herschel 4.2m, and the Observatoire du mont Megantic 1.6m telescopes. The velocity fields are computed using custom IDL routines designed for an optimal use of the data. The kinematical parameters and rotation curves are derived using the GIPSY software. It is shown that non-circular motions associated with galactic bars affect the kinematical parameters fitting and the velocity gradient of the rotation curves. This leads to incorrect determinations of the baryonic and dark matter distributions in the mass models derived from those rotation curves.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. Accepted for publication in MNRAS. All high-res. figures are available at http://www.astro.umontreal.ca/fantomm/singsII

A WDM/Optical-CDMA (WDM/O-CDMA) Concept for Avionics Integration

We describe a concept where WDM and O-CDMA share a set of discrete wavelengths and components while using similar modulation formats. O-CDMA acts as a channel multiplier. Experiments show the feasibility of >2X channel multiplication

Search for CP violation in D0 and D+ decays

A high statistics sample of photoproduced charm particles from the FOCUS (E831) experiment at Fermilab has been used to search for CP violation in the Cabibbo suppressed decay modes D+ to K-K+pi+, D0 to K-K+ and D0 to pi-pi+. We have measured the following CP asymmetry parameters: A_CP(K-K+pi+) = +0.006 +/- 0.011 +/- 0.005, A_CP(K-K+) = -0.001 +/- 0.022 +/- 0.015 and A_CP(pi-pi+) = +0.048 +/- 0.039 +/- 0.025 where the first error is statistical and the second error is systematic. These asymmetries are consistent with zero with smaller errors than previous measurements.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure