The Effects of Mindfulness-Based Interventions on Working Memory Capacity

Researchers have sought to determine more effective methods of improving learning outcomes for decades, but have more recently examined mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). Mindfulness is characterized as being completely present in the current moment, and has been shown to have potential positive implications for attentional abilities and working memory capacity (Mrazek, Franklin, Phillips, Baird, & Schooler, 2013), or the limited workspace that alternates between processing demands and storage. MBIs have been shown to increase working memory capacity (WMC), increase positive affect, and protect WMC from erosion during high stress situations (Jha, Stanley, Kiyonaga, Wong, & Gelfand, 2010). Although previous research (e.g. Chiesa, Calati, & Serretti, 2011) reflects the effectiveness of MBIs for increasing WMC, some limitations and negative results demonstrate a need for more research regarding mindfulness interventions. Therefore, the purpose of this research was to determine if MBIs increased WMC in a sample of 30 college students. Participants were randomly assigned to an experimental mindfulness condition, a comparison relaxation condition, or a control of reading. The study entailed a total of six sessions over six weeks. During the first, fourth, and final sessions participants received a battery of diagnostic tests and a demographic survey, and completed their assigned intervention during all but the first session. For the purposes of the current study, the results of the Operation Span Task (OSPAN) are being examined by two research assistants to determine any changes in WMC of the participants, and researchers theorize participants who completed an MBI will show significantly larger increases in WMC than participants of other conditions. These results would support MBIs as a method for increasing WMC in students, and suggest there is potential for MBIs to positively impact learning outcomes and thereby increasing academic success of students

Studying the Effect of Data Structures on the Efficiency of Collaborative Filtering Systems

This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in CERI '16 Proceedings of the 4th Spanish Conference on Information Retrieval, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2934732.2934747Recommender systems is an active research area where the major focus has been on how to improve the quality of gen- erated recommendations, but less attention has been paid on how to do it in an e cient way. This aspect is increas- ingly important because the information to be considered by recommender systems is growing exponentially. In this pa- per we study how di erent data structures a ect the perfor- mance of these systems. Our results with two public datasets provide relevant insights regarding the optimal data struc- tures in terms of memory and time usages. Speci cally, we show that classical data structures like Binary Search Trees and Red-Black Trees can beat more complex and popular alternatives like Hash Tables

Remarques sur la vaccination à l'aide du vaccin capri-pestique

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Effects of Mindfulness Based Interventions on Mind Wandering in Students

The Effect of Mindfulness-based Interventions on College Students’ Mind Wandering Recent research has found that the human attention span has decreased to a short eight seconds, one second shorter than a goldfish (Patrick, 2015). Research suggests the mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) improve individuals’ attention abilities, including working memory capacity (Kane & McVay, 2012). Mind wandering is one aspect of attention, and is defined as thoughts flowing freely without any direction or control of the individual having them. One study found that even eight minutes of a mindfulness activity decreases mind wandering (Mrazek, Smallwood, & Schooler, 2012). These results show that short mindfulness activities can have a worthwhile effect on students’ attentional processes, which has potential implications for students such as increasing working memory capacity and reading comprehension (Kane & McVay, 2012; Smallwood, McSpadden, & Schooler, 2008). The purpose of this study, therefore is to discover if mindfulness-based intervention does decrease mind wandering in college students. In a randomized controlled trial study, 30 participants were recruited and were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: a recording led relaxation task, a recording led mindfulness-based intervention, or a control task of reading an article. Researchers used a mind wandering probe to measure the amount of mind wandering done by each participant throughout all sessions. This probe followed each intervention and included four questions to see how much effort the participant put into the intervention and how well they felt that they followed directions. Data is currently being analyzed from the 30 completed participants by two research assistants in the CRESP lab. Past research calls for well-designed studies to support mindfulness as an effective intervention for students, and this study supports the theory that mindfulness interventions are indeed useful for decreasing mind wandering in students. References: Kane, Michael J. & McVay, Jennifer C. (2012). What Mind Wandering Reveals About Executive-Control Abilities and Failures. Association for Psychological Science, 21(5), 348-354. DOI: 0.1177/0963721412454875 Mrazek, M. D., Smallwood, J., & Schooler, J. W. (2012). Mindfulness and Mind-Wandering: Finding Convergence Through Opposing Constructs. Emotion. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0026678 Smallwood, J., McSpadden, M. & Schooler, J. W. (2008). When attention matter: The curious incident of the wandering mind. Memory and Cognition, 36(6), 1144-1150. DOI: 10.3758/MC.36.6.1144 Patrick, Josh. (2015, September 28) Taking time to unplug. SunHerald. Retrieved from http://www.sunherald.com/latest-news/article37514199.htm

Shower development of particles with momenta from 15 GeV to 150 GeV in the CALICE scintillator-tungsten hadronic calorimeter

We present a study of showers initiated by electrons, pions, kaons, and protons with momenta from 15 GeV to 150 GeV in the highly granular CALICE scintillator-tungsten analogue hadronic calorimeter. The data were recorded at the CERN Super Proton Synchrotron in 2011. The analysis includes measurements of the calorimeter response to each particle type as well as measurements of the energy resolution and studies of the longitudinal and radial shower development for selected particles. The results are compared to Geant4 simulations (version 9.6.p02). In the study of the energy resolution we include previously published data with beam momenta from 1 GeV to 10 GeV recorded at the CERN Proton Synchrotron in 2010.Comment: 35 pages, 21 figures, 8 table

Pion and proton showers in the CALICE scintillator-steel analogue hadron calorimeter

Showers produced by positive hadrons in the highly granular CALICE scintillator-steel analogue hadron calorimeter were studied. The experimental data were collected at CERN and FNAL for single particles with initial momenta from 10 to 80 GeV/c. The calorimeter response and resolution and spatial characteristics of shower development for proton- and pion-induced showers for test beam data and simulations using Geant4 version 9.6 are compared.Comment: 26 pages, 16 figures, JINST style, changes in the author list, typos corrected, new section added, figures regrouped. Accepted for publication in JINS

Performance of the first prototype of the CALICE scintillator strip electromagnetic calorimeter

A first prototype of a scintillator strip-based electromagnetic calorimeter was built, consisting of 26 layers of tungsten absorber plates interleaved with planes of 45x10x3 mm3 plastic scintillator strips. Data were collected using a positron test beam at DESY with momenta between 1 and 6 GeV/c. The prototype's performance is presented in terms of the linearity and resolution of the energy measurement. These results represent an important milestone in the development of highly granular calorimeters using scintillator strip technology. This technology is being developed for a future linear collider experiment, aiming at the precise measurement of jet energies using particle flow techniques

The Time Structure of Hadronic Showers in highly granular Calorimeters with Tungsten and Steel Absorbers

The intrinsic time structure of hadronic showers influences the timing capability and the required integration time of hadronic calorimeters in particle physics experiments, and depends on the active medium and on the absorber of the calorimeter. With the CALICE T3B experiment, a setup of 15 small plastic scintillator tiles read out with Silicon Photomultipliers, the time structure of showers is measured on a statistical basis with high spatial and temporal resolution in sampling calorimeters with tungsten and steel absorbers. The results are compared to GEANT4 (version 9.4 patch 03) simulations with different hadronic physics models. These comparisons demonstrate the importance of using high precision treatment of low-energy neutrons for tungsten absorbers, while an overall good agreement between data and simulations for all considered models is observed for steel.Comment: 24 pages including author list, 9 figures, published in JINS

A Purity Monitoring System for the H1 Liquid Argon Calorimeter

The ionization probes used for monitoring the liquid argon purity in the H1 calorimeter are described and results of their operation in tests at CERN and during the period 1992 to the end of 1998 at HERA are given. The high sensitivity of the charge measurements leads to refined charge collection models, and to the observation of a variation of the ionization yield of our electron sources with temperature.Comment: 26 pages, 14 figure