1,010 research outputs found
NewsPad: Designing for Collaborative Storytelling in Neighborhoods
This paper introduces design explorations in neighborhood collaborative
storytelling. We focus on blogs and citizen journalism, which have been
celebrated as a means to meet the reporting needs of small local communities.
These bloggers have limited capacity and social media feeds seldom have the
context or readability of news stories. We present NewsPad, a content editor
that helps communities create structured stories, collaborate in real time,
recruit contributors, and syndicate the editing process. We evaluate NewsPad in
four pilot deployments and find that the design elicits collaborative story
creation.Comment: NewsPad: designing for collaborative storytelling in neighborhoods.
In Proceedings of the extended abstracts of the 32nd annual ACM conference on
Human factors in computing systems (CHI EA 2014
Daily ingestion of alginate reduces energy intake in free-living subjects
Sodium alginate is a seaweed-derived fibre that has previously been shown to moderate appetite in models of acute feeding. The mechanisms underlying this effect may include slowed gastric clearance and attenuated uptake from the small intestine. In order to assess whether alginate could be effective as a means of appetite control in free-living adults, 68 males and females (BMI range: 18.50-32.81 kgl M-2) completed this randomised, controlled two-way crossover intervention to compare the effects of 7 day daily ingestion of a strong-gelling sodium alginate formulation against a control. A sodium alginate with a high-guluronate content was chosen because, upon ingestion, it forms a strong gel in the presence of calcium ions. Daily preprandial ingestion of the sodium alginate formulation produced a significant 134.8 kcal (7%) reduction in mean daily energy intake. This reduced energy intake was underwritten by significant reductions in mean daily carbohydrate, sugar, fat, saturated fat and protein intakes. The absence of any significant interaction effects between the main effect of preload type and those of gender, BMI classification and/or timing of preload delivery indicates the efficacy of this treatment for individuals in different settings. These findings suggest a possible role for a strong-gelling sodium alginate formulation in the future management of overweight and obesity. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved
Heuristic Segmentation of a Nonstationary Time Series
Many phenomena, both natural and human-influenced, give rise to signals whose
statistical properties change under time translation, i.e., are nonstationary.
For some practical purposes, a nonstationary time series can be seen as a
concatenation of stationary segments. Using a segmentation algorithm, it has
been reported that for heart beat data and Internet traffic fluctuations--the
distribution of durations of these stationary segments decays with a power law
tail. A potential technical difficulty that has not been thoroughly
investigated is that a nonstationary time series with a (scale-free) power law
distribution of stationary segments is harder to segment than other
nonstationary time series because of the wider range of possible segment sizes.
Here, we investigate the validity of a heuristic segmentation algorithm
recently proposed by Bernaola-Galvan et al. by systematically analyzing
surrogate time series with different statistical properties. We find that if a
given nonstationary time series has stationary periods whose size is
distributed as a power law, the algorithm can split the time series into a set
of stationary segments with the correct statistical properties. We also find
that the estimated power law exponent of the distribution of stationary-segment
sizes is affected by (i) the minimum segment size, and (ii) the ratio of the
standard deviation of the mean values of the segments, and the standard
deviation of the fluctuations within a segment. Furthermore, we determine that
the performance of the algorithm is generally not affected by uncorrelated
noise spikes or by weak long-range temporal correlations of the fluctuations
within segments.Comment: 23 pages, 14 figure
Short-term protein supplementation does not alter energy intake, macronutrient intake and appetite in 50â75 year old adults
Ageing is associated with a reduction in muscle mass and strength, termed sarcopenia. Dietary protein is important for the maintenance of muscle mass through the promotion of muscle protein synthesis. However, protein is also reported to be a highly satiating nutrient. This raises concerns that protein intake for musculoskeletal health reasons in older adults may exacerbate age-related decreased appetite and may result in reduced energy and nutrient intake. This study aimed to investigate the effect of short-term protein supplementation and its timing (morning vs. evening), on energy and nutrient intake and appetite measures in middle-older age adults. Twenty-four 50â75 year olds were recruited to a randomised cross-over trial. In phase 1 (pre-supplementation) participants completed a food diary and reported hunger and appetite on three alternate days. During the second and third phases, participants consumed a 20 g whey protein gel (78 mL/368 kJ), for four days, either in the morning (after breakfast) or the evening (before bed), whilst completing the same assessments as phase 1. No differences in dietary intakes of energy, macronutrients and micronutrients were recorded when comparing the pre-supplementation phase to the protein supplementation phases, irrespective of timing (excluding the contribution of the protein supplement itself). Similarly, no differences were observed in self-reported feelings of hunger and appetite. In conclusion, a 20 g/day whey protein supplement given outside of meal-times did not alter habitual dietary intakes, hunger or appetite in this middle-older age adult population in the short-term. This approach may be a useful strategy to increasing habitual protein intake in the middle-older age population
Using kinematic analyses to explore sensorimotor control impairments in children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome
Background: The 22q11.2 deletion is associated with psychiatric and behavioural disorders, intellectual disability and multiple physical abnormalities. Recent research also indicates impaired coordination skills may be part of the clinical phenotype. This study aimed to characterise sensorimotor control abilities in children with 22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11.2DS) and investigate their relationships with co-occurring IQ impairments and psychopathology. Methods: Fifty-four children with 22q11.2DS and 24 unaffected sibling controls, comparable in age and gender, underwent kinematic analysis of their hand movements, whilst performing a battery of three visuo-manual coordination tasks that measured their tracking, aiming and steering abilities. Additionally, standardised assessments of full-scale IQ (FSIQ), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, indicative autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and anxiety disorder symptomatology were conducted. Results: Children with 22q11.2DS showed deficits on seven of eight kinematic descriptors of movement quality across the three coordination tasks, compared to controls. Within 22q11.2DS cases, the extent of impairment on only three kinematic descriptors was significantly related to FSIQ after correction for multiple testing. Moreover, only error whilst visuo-manually tracking was nominally associated with ADHD symptom counts. Conclusions: Impairments in sensorimotor control are seen on a range of visuo-manual tasks in children with 22q11.2DS but the extent of these impairments are largely unrelated to the severity of other psychopathological and intellectual impairments commonly found in children with 22q11.2DS.</p
Classification of multipartite entangled states by multidimensional determinants
We find that multidimensional determinants "hyperdeterminants", related to
entanglement measures (the so-called concurrence or 3-tangle for the 2 or 3
qubits, respectively), are derived from a duality between entangled states and
separable states. By means of the hyperdeterminant and its singularities, the
single copy of multipartite pure entangled states is classified into an onion
structure of every closed subset, similar to that by the local rank in the
bipartite case. This reveals how inequivalent multipartite entangled classes
are partially ordered under local actions. In particular, the generic entangled
class of the maximal dimension, distinguished as the nonzero hyperdeterminant,
does not include the maximally entangled states in Bell's inequalities in
general (e.g., in the qubits), contrary to the widely known
bipartite or 3-qubit cases. It suggests that not only are they never locally
interconvertible with the majority of multipartite entangled states, but they
would have no grounds for the canonical n-partite entangled states. Our
classification is also useful for the mixed states.Comment: revtex4, 10 pages, 4 eps figures with psfrag; v2 title changed, 1
appendix added, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Western oceanus procellarum as seen by c1xs on chandrayaan-1
We present the analysis of an X-ray fluorescence (XRF) observation of the western part of Oceanus Procellarum on the Moonâs nearside made by the Chandrayaan-1 X-ray Spectrometer on 10th February 2009. Through forward modelling of the X-ray spectra, we provide estimates of the MgO/SiO2 and Al2O3/SiO2 ratios for seven regions along the flareâs ground track. These results are combined with FeO and TiO2 contents derived from Clementine multispectral reflectance data in order to investigate the compositional diversity of this region of the Moon. The ground track observed consists mainly of low-Ti basaltic units, and the XRF data are largely consistent with this expectation. However, we obtain higher Al2O3/SiO2 ratios for these units than for most basalts in the Apollo sample collection. The widest compositional variation between the different lava flows is in wt% FeO content. A footprint that occurs in a predominantly highland region, immediately to the north of Oceanus Procellarum, has a composition that is consistent with mixing between low-Ti mare basaltic and more feldspathic regoliths. In contrast to some previous studies, we find no evidence for systematic differences in surface composition, as determined through X-ray and gamma-ray spectroscopy techniques
Subleading Jet Functions in Inclusive B Decays
The contribution of subleading jet functions to inclusive decay distributions
of mesons are derived from a systematic two-step matching of QCD current
correlators onto soft collinear and heavy quark effective theory. Focusing on
the tree level matching of QCD onto soft collinear effective theory, the
subleading jet functions are defined to all orders in (with
) and are calculated explicitly at first
order in . We present explicit expressions for the decay rates
of and the contribution to , where the subleading jet functions are multiplied by a tree level
hard function and appear in a convolution with the leading order shape
function. Together with the recent two loop calculation of the leading order
hard function for , this paper will allow for a more
precise description of inclusive B decays in the end point region.Comment: Minor changes: reference added, typos corrected, journal versio
Measurement of serum haptoglobin as an indicator of the efficacy of malaria intervention trials
Three-body non-additive forces between spin-polarized alkali atoms
Three-body non-additive forces in systems of three spin-polarized alkali
atoms (Li, Na, K, Rb and Cs) are investigated using high-level ab initio
calculations. The non-additive forces are found to be large, especially near
the equilateral equilibrium geometries. For Li, they increase the three-atom
potential well depth by a factor of 4 and reduce the equilibrium interatomic
distance by 0.9 A. The non-additive forces originate principally from chemical
bonding arising from sp mixing effects.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures (in 5 files
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