Instructional Design, Learning Satisfaction, and Learning Outcome in a Virtual Reality Learning Environment Aimed at Improving the Cognition of Computer Hardware Components

The integration of teaching materials with virtual reality (VR) technology is a common method for improving student interaction in courses, providing students with experience related to real-life spatial environments in class. This study developed a cost-effective and portable device that offers an immersive VR experience for learning the identification of computer hardware components. This device enables teachers to train technicians in computer hardware fabrication. The experimental group comprised 12 participants. According to the results of the learning satisfaction analysis, the students highly enjoyed the immersive learning experience. Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-rank test are used for statistical analysis. Analysis of cognitive learning outcomes indicated that all students accurately identified all computer components after the intervention. By using the immersion teaching method, teachers could considerably improve the learning outcomes of students related to their cognition of computer hardware components

Properties of Noncommutative Renyi and Augustin Information

The scaled R\'enyi information plays a significant role in evaluating the performance of information processing tasks by virtue of its connection to the error exponent analysis. In quantum information theory, there are three generalizations of the classical R\'enyi divergence---the Petz's, sandwiched, and log-Euclidean versions, that possess meaningful operational interpretation. However, these scaled noncommutative R\'enyi informations are much less explored compared with their classical counterpart, and lacking crucial properties hinders applications of these quantities to refined performance analysis. The goal of this paper is thus to analyze fundamental properties of scaled R\'enyi information from a noncommutative measure-theoretic perspective. Firstly, we prove the uniform equicontinuity for all three quantum versions of R\'enyi information, hence it yields the joint continuity of these quantities in the orders and priors. Secondly, we establish the concavity in the region of $s\in(-1,0)$ for both Petz's and the sandwiched versions. This completes the open questions raised by Holevo [\href{https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/868501/}{\textit{IEEE Trans.~Inf.~Theory}, \textbf{46}(6):2256--2261, 2000}], Mosonyi and Ogawa [\href{https://doi.org/10.1007/s00220-017-2928-4/}{\textit{Commun.~Math.~Phys}, \textbf{355}(1):373--426, 2017}]. For the applications, we show that the strong converse exponent in classical-quantum channel coding satisfies a minimax identity. The established concavity is further employed to prove an entropic duality between classical data compression with quantum side information and classical-quantum channel coding, and a Fenchel duality in joint source-channel coding with quantum side information in the forthcoming papers

Using Script Command to Conquer the Narrowband Constraint in Synchronous Long-distance Teaching System

Abstract: The applications of synchronous long-distance teaching (SLDT) are more and more valuable with the internet prevalence. One of the SLDT restrictions is the bandwidth consumption of the connection between teacher's side and students' sides. Even though most users use broadband network at present, there are still users using narrowband networks, such as dial-up and 3.5G network. It is very difficult to conduct SLDT in the narrowband network unless reducing the demands of network bandwidth consumption, especially while the teaching materials including video, audio, and so on. This paper proposes a novel scheme to reduce the network bandwidth requirement of SLDT efficiently. Original SLDT system transmits all teaching materials in full screen frames, so that it needs a great amount of network bandwidth. The proposed innovative technique encodes some of the teaching materials, including typing texts, messages on the electronic whiteboard, drawing pictures and timestamps into script commands. In this way, the encoded script commands are transmitted through the text channel of the multimedia streaming, while the audio and video channels carry the teacher's voice and images. When the students' sides receive the multimedia streaming, it is decoded back to the full screen frames. In this paper, the design of the encoder and decoder will be addressed in detail. The experimental results proved that our proposed scheme could reduce the demand of network bandwidth consumption efficaciously. Even at the dial-up and 3.5G network environment, students' sides could play the teaching frames very smoothly. That is, our implemented system could conquer the narrowband constraint and provide users to carry out SLDT in the narrowband network

Molecular typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolated from adult patients with tubercular spondylitis

Background/PurposeTuberculosis (TB) is endemic in Taiwan and usually affects the lung, spinal TB accounting for 1–3% of all TB infections. The manifestations of spinal TB are different from those of pulmonary TB. The purpose of this study was to define the epidemiological molecular types of mycobacterial strains causing spinal TB.MethodsWe retrospectively reviewed the medical charts of adult patients diagnosed with spinal TB from January 1998 to December 2007. Patients with positive culture results and/or pathological findings characteristic of TB were enrolled in this study. Spoligotyping was performed to type the Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates.ResultsA total of 38 patients with spinal TB were identified. Their mean age was 68 years, and their median duration of symptoms was 60 days (range 3–720 days). The lumbar and thoracic spine accounted for 76% of the sites involved. Thirteen specimens (from seven male and six female patients) were available for typing. Spoligotyping of these 13 specimens revealed three Beijing (23%) and 10 non-Beijing types (77%). The non-Beijing types included two EAI2 Manilla (15%), two H3 (15%), two unclassified (15%), and one each of BOVIS1, U, T2, and orphan type. No significant predominant strain was found in this study, and no drug-resistant Beijing strains were identified.ConclusionTB spondylitis was found to occur in older patients. Spoligotyping results showed that most of the TB spondylitis cases were caused by non-Beijing type Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Molecular epidemiology and emergence of worldwide epidemic clones of Neisseria meningitidis in Taiwan

BACKGROUND: Meningococcal disease is infrequently found in Taiwan, a country with 23 million people. Between 1996 and 2002, 17 to 81 clinical cases of the disease were reported annually. Reported cases dramatically increased in 2001–2002. Our record shows that only serogroup B and W135 meningococci have been isolated from patients with meningococcal disease until 2000. However, serogroup A, C and Y meningococci were detected for the first time in 2001 and continued to cause disease through 2002. Most of serogroup Y meningococcus infections localized in Central Taiwan in 2001, indicating that a small-scale outbreak of meningococcal disease had occurred. The occurrence of a meningococcal disease outbreak and the emergence of new meningococcal strains are of public health concern. METHODS: Neisseria meningitidis isolates from patients with meningococcal disease from 1996 to 2002 were collected and characterized by serogrouping, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). The genetic relatedness and clonal relationship between the isolates were analyzed by using the PFGE patterns and the allelic profiles of the sequence types (STs). RESULTS: Serogroups A, B, C, W135, Y, and non-serogroupable Neisseria meningitidis were, respectively, responsible for 2%, 50%, 2%, 35%, 9%, and 2% of 158 culture-confirmed cases of meningococcal disease in 1996–2002. Among 100 N. meningitidis isolates available for PFGE and MLST analyses, 51 different PFGE patterns and 30 STs were identified with discriminatory indices of 0.95 and 0.87, respectively. Of the 30 STs, 21 were newly identified and of which 19 were found in serogroup B isolates. A total of 40 PFGE patterns were identified in 52 serogroup B isolates with the patterns distributed over several distinct clusters. In contrast, the isolates within each of the serogroups A, C, W135, and Y shared high levels of PFGE pattern similarity. Analysis of the allelic profile of the 30 STs suggested the serogroup B isolates be assigned into 5 clonally related groups/ clonal complexes and 7 unique clones. The ST-41/44 complex/Lineage 3, and the ST-3439 and ST-3200 groups represented 79% of the serogroup B meningococci. In contrast, isolates within serogroups A, serogroup W135 (and C), and serogroup Y, respectively, simply belonged to ST-7, ST-11, and ST-23 clones. CONCLUSION: Our data suggested that serogroup B isolates were derived from several distinct lineages, most of which could either be indigenous or were introduced into Taiwan a long time ago. The serogroup A, W135 (and C), and Y isolates, respectively, belonged to the ST-7, ST-11, and ST-23, and the represented clones that are currently the major circulating clones in the world and are introduced into Taiwan more recently. The emergence of serogroup A, C and Y strains contributed partly to the increase in cases of meningococcal disease in 2001–2002

The Inhibitory Effect of Ellagic Acid on Cell Growth of Ovarian Carcinoma Cells

Ellagic acid (EA) is able to inhibit the growth of several cancer cells; however, its effect on human ovarian carcinoma cells has not yet been investigated. Ovarian carcinoma ES-2 and PA-1 cells were treated with EA (10~100 μM) and assessed for viability, cell cycle, apoptosis, anoikis, autophagy, and chemosensitivity to doxorubicin and their molecular mechanisms. EA inhibited cell proliferation in a dose- and time-dependent manner by arresting both cell lines at the G1 phase of the cell cycle, which were from elevating p53 and Cip1/p21 and decreasing cyclin D1 and E levels. EA also induced caspase-3-mediated apoptosis by increasing the Bax : Bcl-2 ratio and restored anoikis in both cell lines. The enhancement of apoptosis and/or inhibition of autophagy in these cells by EA assisted the chemotherapy efficacy. The results indicated that EA is a potential novel chemoprevention and treatment assistant agent for human ovarian carcinoma

Language-Specific Representation of Emotion-Concept Knowledge Causally Supports Emotion Inference

Understanding how language supports emotion inference remains a topic of debate in emotion science. The present study investigated whether language-derived emotion-concept knowledge would causally support emotion inference by manipulating the language-specific knowledge representations in large language models. Using the prompt technique, 14 attributes of emotion concepts were found to be represented by distinct artificial neuron populations. By manipulating these attribute-related neurons, the majority of the emotion inference tasks showed performance deterioration compared to random manipulations. The attribute-specific performance deterioration was related to the importance of different attributes in human mental space. Our findings provide causal evidence in support of a language-based mechanism for emotion inference and highlight the contributions of emotion-concept knowledge.Comment: 39 pages, 13 figures, 2 tables, fix formatting error

Structural and cognitive deficits in chronic carbon monoxide intoxication: a voxel-based morphometry study

BACKGROUND: Patients with carbon monoxide (CO) intoxication may develop ongoing neurological and psychiatric symptoms that ebb and flow, a condition often called delayed encephalopathy (DE). The association between morphologic changes in the brain and neuropsychological deficits in DE is poorly understood. METHODS: Magnetic resonance imaging and neuropsychological tests were conducted on 11 CO patients with DE, 11 patients without DE, and 15 age-, sex-, and education-matched healthy subjects. Differences in gray matter volume (GMV) between the subgroups were assessed and further correlated with diminished cognitive functioning. RESULTS: As a group, the patients had lower regional GMV compared to controls in the following regions: basal ganglia, left claustrum, right amygdala, left hippocampus, parietal lobes, and left frontal lobe. The reduced GMV in the bilateral basal ganglia, left post-central gyrus, and left hippocampus correlated with decreased perceptual organization and processing speed function. Those CO patients characterized by DE patients had a lower GMV in the left anterior cingulate and right amygdala, as well as lower levels of cognitive function, than the non-DE patients. CONCLUSIONS: Patients with CO intoxication in the chronic stage showed a worse cognitive and morphologic outcome, especially those with DE. This study provides additional evidence of gray matter structural abnormalities in the pathophysiology of DE in chronic CO intoxicated patients

Investigation of Novel Noncontacting Measurement Method by the Design of Loop-Type Probe and Reconstruction of Radiation Modeling

Because the ICs’ application frequency and speed become higher and trends of system packaging and device under test request higher reliability, a novel technology combining noncontacting measurement method and reconstructing radiation model was proposed to solve signal deliveries in system packages or PCBs. In this study, a novel noncontacting method for the ICs’ measurements was investigated by the design of loop-type near-field probe and reconstructed the radiation model to substitute the traditional measurement methods, such as using probes and SMA connectors. A near-field probe was used to receive the coupling signal. The assessing circuit modeling could be completed by some synthesized theorems. According to the study’s results, frequency responses of reconstruction model developed by theorems, radiation measurements, and simulated by EM methods were highly curve fitting