1,683 research outputs found
Online, Offline and Beyond: The Social Imaginary in a Scottish Diasporic Online Group
This project uses the method of depth hermeneutics to examine how a group of relatively technologically unsophisticated online discussion participants innovate in the formation of a social imaginary, as defined in Thompson\u27s (1990) explication of the use of media to facilitate social interaction. By deploying a diverse range of technologies with which they are competent, the group avoids the uncertainties of new modalities of social networking such as those represented by Second Life, MySpace and Facebook, while pursuing their goal of discursively negotiating a Scottish cultural identity both online and offline
Superconducting Metallic Glass Transition-Edge-Sensors
A superconducting metallic glass transition-edge sensor (MGTES) and a method for fabricating the MGTES are provided. A single-layer superconducting amorphous metal alloy is deposited on a substrate. The single-layer superconducting amorphous metal alloy is an absorber for the MGTES and is electrically connected to a circuit configured for readout and biasing to sense electromagnetic radiation
Nanostructured Platinum Alloys for Use as Catalyst Materials
A series of binary and ternary Pt-alloys, that promote the important reactions for catalysis at an alloy surface; oxygen reduction, hydrogen oxidation, and hydrogen and oxygen evolution. The first two of these reactions are essential when applying the alloy for use in a PEMFC
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Responsiveness of PROMIS® to change in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
BackgroundChronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a progressive chronic disease characterized by airflow obstruction that leads to shortness of breath and substantial negative impacts on health-related quality of life (HRQL). The course of COPD includes periodic acute exacerbations that require changes in treatment and/or hospitalizations. This study was designed to examine the responsiveness of Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System® (PROMIS®) measures to changes associated with COPD exacerbation recovery.MethodsA longitudinal analysis using mixed-effects models was conducted of people who were enrolled while stable (n = 100) and those who experienced an acute exacerbation (n = 85). PROMIS (physical function, pain interference, pain behavior, fatigue, anxiety, depression, anger, social roles, discretionary social activities, Global Health, dyspnea severity and dyspnea functional limitations) and COPD-targeted HRQL measures were completed at baseline and at 12 weeks.ResultsWe administered PROMIS measures using computer adaptive testing (CAT), followed by administration of any remaining short form (SF) items that had not yet been administered by CAT. Examination of the difference between group differences from baseline to 12 weeks in the stable and exacerbation groups revealed that the exacerbation group changed (improved) significantly more than the stable group in anxiety (p < .001 to p < .01; f2 effect size [ES] = 0.023/0.021), fatigue (p < .0001; ES = 0.036/0.047) and social roles (p < .001 to p < .05; ES = 0.035/0.024). All effect sizes were small in magnitude and smaller than hypothesized. Depression was also statistically significant (p < .05, SF only) but the ES was trivial. For all other PROMIS domains, the differences were not significant and ES were trivial.ConclusionsThis longitudinal study provides some support for the validity of the PROMIS fatigue, anxiety, and social roles domains in COPD, but further evaluation of responsiveness is warranted
Visual Estimation of Fingertip Pressure on Diverse Surfaces using Easily Captured Data
People often use their hands to make contact with the world and apply
pressure. Machine perception of this important human activity could be widely
applied. Prior research has shown that deep models can estimate hand pressure
based on a single RGB image. Yet, evaluations have been limited to controlled
settings, since performance relies on training data with high-resolution
pressure measurements that are difficult to obtain. We present a novel approach
that enables diverse data to be captured with only an RGB camera and a
cooperative participant. Our key insight is that people can be prompted to
perform actions that correspond with categorical labels describing contact
pressure (contact labels), and that the resulting weakly labeled data can be
used to train models that perform well under varied conditions. We demonstrate
the effectiveness of our approach by training on a novel dataset with 51
participants making fingertip contact with instrumented and uninstrumented
objects. Our network, ContactLabelNet, dramatically outperforms prior work,
performs well under diverse conditions, and matched or exceeded the performance
of human annotators
Solar Wind Neon from Genesis: Implications for the Lunar Noble Gas Record
Lunar soils have been thought to contain two solar noble gas components with distinct isotopic composition. One has been identified as implanted solar wind, the other as higher-energy solar particles. The latter was puzzling because its relative amounts were much too large compared with present-day fluxes, suggesting periodic, very high solar activity in the past. Here we show that the depth-dependent isotopic composition of neon in a metallic glass exposed on NASA's Genesis mission agrees with the expected depth profile for solar wind neon with uniform isotopic composition. Our results strongly indicate that no extra high-energy component is required and that the solar neon isotope composition of lunar samples can be explained as implantation-fractionated solar wind
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