A proposed framework of an interactive semi-virtual environment for enhanced education of children with autism spectrum disorders

Education of people with special needs has recently been considered as a key element in the field of medical education. Recent development in the area of information and communication technologies may enable development of collaborative interactive environments which facilitate early stage education and provide specialists with robust tools indicating the person's autism spectrum disorder level. Towards the goal of establishing an enhanced learning environment for children with autism this paper attempts to provide a framework of a semi-controlled real-world environment used for the daily education of an autistic person according to the scenarios selected by the specialists. The proposed framework employs both real-world objects and virtual environments equipped with humanoids able to provide emotional feedback and to demonstrate empathy. Potential examples and usage scenarios for such environments are also described

Evaluating adaptive vertical seismic isolation for equipment in nuclear power plants

Seismic isolation systems are widely recognized as beneficial for protecting both acceleration- and displacement-sensitive nonstructural systems and components. So-called adaptive isolation systems exhibit nonlinear characteristics that enable engineers to achieve various performance goals at different hazard levels. These systems have been implemented to control the horizontal response, but there has been limited research on seismic isolation for controlling the vertical response. Thus, this paper seeks to evaluate the merits of adaptive vertical isolation systems for components, specifically in nuclear power plants (NPPs). To do this, six vertical isolation systems are designed to achieve multiple goals. The systems consist of in-parallel configurations of linear and nonlinear springs and dampers, falling into three groups depending on the elements they combine: (1) linear springs and linear dampers (LSLD), (2) linear springs and nonlinear dampers (LSND), and (3) nonlinear springs and linear dampers (NSLD). To investigate the effectiveness of the systems, a stiff piece of equipment is considered at an elevated floor within an NPP. A set of 30 triaxial ground motions is used to investigate the seismic performance of the equipment. The peak isolation displacement and peak equipment acceleration are used to assess the effectiveness of the vertical isolation systems. While all systems significantly reduce the seismic accelerations on the equipment, the relatively simple LSLD and LSND systems exhibit superior performance over multiple hazard levels

Using affective avatars and rich multimedia content for education of children with autism

Autism is a communication disorder that mandates early and continuous educational interventions on various levels like the everyday social, communication and reasoning skills. Computer-aided education has recently been considered as a likely intervention method for such cases, and therefore different systems have been proposed and developed worldwide. In more recent years, affective computing applications for the aforementioned interventions have also been proposed to shed light on this problem. In this paper, we examine the technological and educational needs of affective interventions for autistic persons. Enabling affective technologies are visited and a number of possible exploitation scenarios are illustrated. Emphasis is placed in covering the continuous and long term needs of autistic persons by unobtrusive and ubiquitous technologies with the engagement of an affective speaking avatar. A personalised prototype system facilitating these scenarios is described. In addition the feedback from educators for autistic persons is provided for the system in terms of its usefulness, efficiency and the envisaged reaction of the autistic persons, collected by means of an anonymous questionnaire. Results illustrate the clear potential of this effort in facilitating a very promising autism intervention

Long-time electron spin storage via dynamical suppression of hyperfine-induced decoherence in a quantum dot

The coherence time of an electron spin decohered by the nuclear spin environment in a quantum dot can be substantially increased by subjecting the electron to suitable dynamical decoupling sequences. We analyze the performance of high-level decoupling protocols by using a combination of analytical and exact numerical methods, and by paying special attention to the regimes of large inter-pulse delays and long-time dynamics, which are outside the reach of standard average Hamiltonian theory descriptions. We demonstrate that dynamical decoupling can remain efficient far beyond its formal domain of applicability, and find that a protocol exploiting concatenated design provides best performance for this system in the relevant parameter range. In situations where the initial electron state is known, protocols able to completely freeze decoherence at long times are constructed and characterized. The impact of system and control non-idealities is also assessed, including the effect of intra-bath dipolar interaction, magnetic field bias and bath polarization, as well as systematic pulse imperfections. While small bias field and small bath polarization degrade the decoupling fidelity, enhanced performance and temporal modulation result from strong applied fields and high polarizations. Overall, we find that if the relative errors of the control parameters do not exceed 5%, decoupling protocols can still prolong the coherence time by up to two orders of magnitude.Comment: 16 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

A Fast Tracking Algorithm for the ATLAS Level 2 Trigger

A set of conceptually simple and robust algorithms for fast pattern recognition and track reconstruction using 3D space points developed for the ATLAS Level 2 (LVL2) Trigger at the LHC is presented. Results on execution time and physics performance demonstrating the effectiveness of this approach in a demanding, online trigger environment are presented. Both this strategy and a complimentary lookup table based strategy provided results appearing in the recent ATLAS High-Level Trigger, Data Acquisition and Controls Technical Design Report and were successfully implemented online during data taking for the recent ATLAS combined test beam

Performance of a novel wafer scale CMOS active pixel sensor for bio-medical imaging

Recently CMOS Active Pixels Sensors (APSs) have become a valuable alternative to amorphous Silicon and Selenium Flat Panel Imagers (FPIs) in bio-medical imaging applications. CMOS APSs can now be scaled up to the standard 20 cm diameter wafer size by means of a reticle stitching block process. However despite wafer scale CMOS APS being monolithic, sources of non-uniformity of response and regional variations can persist representing a significant challenge for wafer scale sensor response. Non-uniformity of stitched sensors can arise from a number of factors related to the manufacturing process, including variation of amplification, variation between readout components, wafer defects and process variations across the wafer due to manufacturing processes. This paper reports on an investigation into the spatial non-uniformity and regional variations of a wafer scale stitched CMOS APS. For the first time a per-pixel analysis of the electro-optical performance of a wafer CMOS APS is presented, to address inhomogeneity issues arising from the stitching techniques used to manufacture wafer scale sensors. A complete model of the signal generation in the pixel array has been provided and proved capable of accounting for noise and gain variations across the pixel array. This novel analysis leads to readout noise and conversion gain being evaluated at pixel level, stitching block level and in regions of interest, resulting in a coefficient of variation ≤ 1.9%. The uniformity of the image quality performance has been further investigated in a typical X-ray application, i.e. mammography, showing a uniformity in terms of CNR among the highest when compared with mammography detectors commonly used in clinical practise. Finally, in order to compare the detection capability of this novel APS with the currently used technology (i.e. FPIs), theoretical evaluation of the Detection Quantum Efficiency (DQE) at zero-frequency has been performed, resulting in a higher DQE for this detector compared to FPIs. Optical characterization, X-ray contrast measurements and theoretical DQE evaluation suggest that a trade off can be found between the need of a large imaging area and the requirement of a uniform imaging performance, making the DynAMITe large area CMOS APS suitable for a range of bio-medical applications

MYRIAD: A new N-body code for simulations of Star Clusters

We present a new C++ code for collisional N-body simulations of star clusters. The code uses the Hermite fourth-order scheme with block time steps, for advancing the particles in time, while the forces and neighboring particles are computed using the GRAPE-6 board. Special treatment is used for close encounters, binary and multiple sub-systems that either form dynamically or exist in the initial configuration. The structure of the code is modular and allows the appropriate treatment of more physical phenomena, such as stellar and binary evolution, stellar collisions and evolution of close black-hole binaries. Moreover, it can be easily modified so that the part of the code that uses GRAPE-6, could be replaced by another module that uses other accelerating-hardware like the Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Appropriate choice of the free parameters give a good accuracy and speed for simulations of star clusters up to and beyond core collapse. Simulations of Plummer models consisting of equal-mass stars reached core collapse at t~17 half-mass relaxation times, which compares very well with existing results, while the cumulative relative error in the energy remained below 0.001. Also, comparisons with published results of other codes for the time of core collapse for different initial conditions, show excellent agreement. Simulations of King models with an initial mass-function, similar to those found in the literature, reached core collapse at t~0.17, which is slightly smaller than the expected result from previous works. Finally, the code accuracy becomes comparable and even better than the accuracy of existing codes, when a number of close binary systems is dynamically created in a simulation. This is due to the high accuracy of the method that is used for close binary and multiple sub-systems.Comment: 24 pages, 29 figures, accepted for publication to Astronomy & Astrophysic

Accurate Results from Perturbation Theory for Strongly Frustrated S=1/2S=1/2 Heisenberg Spin Clusters

We investigate the use of perturbation theory in finite sized frustrated spin systems by calculating the effect of quantum fluctuations on coherent states derived from the classical ground state. We first calculate the ground and first excited state wavefunctions as a function of applied field for a 12-site system and compare with the results of exact diagonalization. We then apply the technique to a 20-site system with the same three fold site coordination as the 12-site system. Frustration results in asymptotically convergent series for both systems which are summed with Pad\'e approximants. We find that at zero magnetic field the different connectivity of the two systems leads to a triplet first excited state in the 12-site system and a singlet first excited state in the 20-site system, while the ground state is a singlet for both. We also show how the analytic structure of the Pad\'e approximants at $|\lambda| \simeq 1$ evolves in the complex $\lambda$ plane at the values of the applied field where the ground state switches between spin sectors and how this is connected with the non-trivial dependence of the $$ number on the strength of quantum fluctuations. We discuss the origin of this difference in the energy spectra and in the analytic structures. We also characterize the ground and first excited states according to the values of the various spin correlation functions.Comment: Final version, accepted for publication in Physical review

Magnetic Anisotropy in the Molecular Complex V15

We apply degenerate perturbation theory to investigate the effects of magnetic anisotropy in the magnetic molecule V15. Magnetic anisotropy is introduced via Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya (DM) interaction in the full Hilbert space of the system. Our model provides an explanation for the rounding of transitions in the magnetization as a function of applied field at low temperature, from which an estimate for the DM interaction is found. We find that the calculated energy differences of the lowest energy states are consistent with the available data. Our model also offers a novel explanation for the hysteretic nature of the time-dependent magnetization data.Comment: Final versio

The Glasgow Benefit Inventory: a systematic review of the use and value of an otorhinolaryngological generic patient-recorded outcome measure

The Glasgow Benefit Inventory (GBI) is a validated, generic patient-recorded outcome measure widely used in otolaryngology to report change in quality of life post-intervention.To date, no systematic review has made (i) a quality assessment of reporting of Glasgow Benefit Inventory outcomes; (ii) a comparison between Glasgow Benefit Inventory outcomes for different interventions and objectives; (iii) an evaluation of subscales in describing the area of benefit; (iv) commented on its value in clinical practice and research.Systematic review.'Glasgow Benefit Inventory' and 'GBI' were used as keywords to search for published, unpublished and ongoing trials in PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL and Google in addition to an ISI citation search for the original validating Glasgow Benefit Inventory paper between 1996 and January 2015.Papers were assessed for study type and quality graded by a predesigned scale, by two authors independently. Papers with sufficient quality Glasgow Benefit Inventory data were identified for statistical comparisons. Papers with 50% and gave sufficient Glasgow Benefit Inventory total and subscales for meta-analysis. For five of the 11 operation categories (vestibular schwannoma, tonsillectomy, cochlear implant, middle ear implant and stapes surgery) that were most likely to have a single clear clinical objective, score data had low-to-moderate heterogeneity. The value in the Glasgow Benefit Inventory having both positive and negative scores was shown by an overall negative score for the management of vestibular schwannoma. The other six operations gave considerable heterogeneity with rhinoplasty and septoplasty giving the greatest percentages (98% and 99%) most likely because of the considerable variations in patient selection. The data from these operations should not be used for comparative purposes. Five papers also reported the number of patients that had no or negative benefit, a potentially a more clinically useful outcome to report. Glasgow Benefit Inventory subscores for tonsillectomy were significantly different from ear surgery suggesting different areas of benefitThe Glasgow Benefit Inventory has been shown to differentiate the benefit between surgical and medical otolaryngology interventions as well as 'reassurance'. Reporting benefit as percentages with negative, no and positive benefit would enable better comparisons between different interventions with varying objectives and pathology. This could also allow easier evaluation of factors that predict benefit. Meta-analysis data are now available for comparison purposes for vestibular schwannoma, tonsillectomy, cochlear implant, middle ear implant and stapes surgery. Fuller report of the Glasgow Benefit Inventory outcomes for non-surgical otolaryngology interventions is encouraged