Vehicle Battery Safety Roadmap Guidance

The safety of electrified vehicles with high capacity energy storage devices creates challenges that must be met to assure commercial acceptance of EVs and HEVs. High performance vehicular traction energy storage systems must be intrinsically tolerant of abusive conditions: overcharge, short circuit, crush, fire exposure, overdischarge, and mechanical shock and vibration. Fail-safe responses to these conditions must be designed into the system, at the materials and the system level, through selection of materials and safety devices that will further reduce the probability of single cell failure and preclude propagation of failure to adjacent cells. One of the most important objectives of DOE's Office of Vehicle Technologies is to support the development of lithium ion batteries that are safe and abuse tolerant in electric drive vehicles. This Roadmap analyzes battery safety and failure modes of state-of-the-art cells and batteries and makes recommendations on future investments that would further DOE's mission

The Effects of Crossbreeding and Low Fish Meal Diets on Growth-Related Traits in Chinook Salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha)

Growth rate is the most important trait that can be manipulated to create more efficient aquaculture. Crossbreeding, where different populations are bred, has the potential to increase performance through release from inbreeding depression. I crossed a farm population of Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) with seven wild populations, then compared growth rate, feed conversion efficiency, swimming speed and metabolic rate between the crossbred and original farmed lines. Crossbreeding resulted in increased growth rates, but had no effect on the other traits. I next evaluated the feasibility of using a diet that replaced fish meal with corn gluten meal and poultry meal. The alternative diet had no effect on growth rate or survival, but led to increased fat content and decreased tissue pigmentation. My thesis supports using crossbreeding in salmon aquaculture to increase growth rate, but found a low fish meal diet was not viable due to its effects on tissue colour

Variables affecting compliance of pigeons

Pigeons served in experiments modeling compliance techniques studied by applied behavior analysts and social psychologists. A discrete-trial procedure operated in each experiment. In baseline, each trial consisted of a single key color, and in test conditions, each trial consisted of a sequence of key colors. Across experiments, there were either two or three trial types in baseline. When there were two, one color was correlated with a low fixed ratio (FR) on half the trials, and on the other trials a second color was correlated with another schedule that differed across experiments. Food was delivered on most of the low-FR trials, and on only a portion of the trials of the latter type. When there were three trial types, two were as just described, and a third color, correlated with extinction, occurred on the other third of the trials. In test conditions, a sequence of key colors, each with its correlated consequences, preceded the key color correlated with food on only a portion of its trials. Relative to baseline, responding to this latter key increased under a high FR when each key color in the preceding sequence was correlated with either a low FR (one experiment) or extinction (another experiment). The functional equivalence between the effects of the two sequences then was assessed by comparing, across conditions, different combinations of the two stimuli in a single sequence (e.g., low FR-extinction-low FR versus extinction-low FR-extinction). The results, however, were inconclusive. Effects of sequences comprised of only the low FR then were studied across experiments in which the high FR was replaced by either a variable-interval (VI) or differential-reinforcement-of-low-rate (DRL) schedule. Response rates changed little under the VI and increased under the DRL. A behavioral conceptualization of compliance, the value of animal models of compliance, the study of compliance as a link between basic and applied behavior analysis, and between behavior analysis and social psychology, as well as different accounts of compliance change, all are discussed

The effects of premenstrual syndrome on women with mental disabilities

Studies have shown that P.M.S. has a negative effect for women on many aspects of life. P.M.S. seems to affect social situations, family life, stress, mood, substance abuse, and crime. The purpose of this one way analysis study is to evaluate the effects of P.M.S. on women with mental disabilities with non-compliant behaviors. Fifty women, whose intelligence quotient levels range between severe and profound, who reside in an institution for individuals with mental disabilities were selected for this study. Each woman has some type of non-compliant behavior. Each female has been placed on a behavior modification program plan to reduce these behaviors. When these specified behaviors occur, the behaviors are marked on a frequency sheet in compliance with the program plan. Recording of the data in this study was accomplished through the use of frequency sheets used with the behavior modification program plan. The results of this dependent study was tested using a t-test. The results of the statistical testing showed no significant difference between pre-menstrual and post-menstrual behavior

Optimal psycholinguistic environments for distance foreign langauge learning

Rational choices among the numerous technological options available for foreign language teaching need to be based, in part, on psycholinguistic considerations. Which technological advances help create an optimal psycholinguistic environment for language learning, and which may be innovative but relatively unhelpful? One potential source of guidance is offered by the ten methodological principles of Task-Based Language Teaching (Long, 1985, and elsewhere), each realizable by a variety of pedagogic procedures. Interest in TBLT derives from several sources, including its responsiveness to learners’ precisely specified communicative needs, the potential it offers for developing functional language proficiency without sacrificing grammatical accuracy, and its attempt to harmonize the way languages are taught with what SLA research has revealed about how they are learned. TBLT’s ten methodological principles are briefly defined and motivated, and illustrations provided of how the principles can inform choices among technological options in the particular case of distance education for the less commonly taught languages

Tubelet-Contrastive Self-Supervision for Video-Efficient Generalization

We propose a self-supervised method for learning motion-focused video representations. Existing approaches minimize distances between temporally augmented videos, which maintain high spatial similarity. We instead propose to learn similarities between videos with identical local motion dynamics but an otherwise different appearance. We do so by adding synthetic motion trajectories to videos which we refer to as tubelets. By simulating different tubelet motions and applying transformations, such as scaling and rotation, we introduce motion patterns beyond what is present in the pretraining data. This allows us to learn a video representation that is remarkably data efficient: our approach maintains performance when using only 25% of the pretraining videos. Experiments on 10 diverse downstream settings demonstrate our competitive performance and generalizability to new domains and fine-grained actions. Code is available at https://github.com/fmthoker/tubelet-contrast

Integrating e-learning into postgraduate radiotherapy and oncology education: a case study

Training health professionals within University environments has traditionally focused on face-to-face methods. Practitioners working within the UK National Health Service (NHS) have found it difficult to gain leave from work to attend for study due to the demands of the NHS and staff shortages. In response, we developed a distance e learning course to match our current traditional taught programme.The first e learning module (a research methods module) was comparable in content to the traditional taught module, and developed to incorporate a formative assessment design throughout; embodying the Constructivist approach and the principle of assessment for learning. We evaluated student experiences with the e learning module using a pre and post module questionnaire, with the taught cohort used as a comparison. We tested the importance of support, levels of information technology (IT) skills, preferences for e learning and intrinsic motivation. The results identified that highly satisfied e learning students were more likely to report a preference for e learning initially, show higher levels of intrinsic motivation and report good support from tutors and fellow students. This article discusses the development and evaluation of the pilot module and some of the lessons learned from providing e learning to health workers