12,049 research outputs found
Development of a technology adoption and usage prediction tool for assistive technology for people with dementia
This article is available open access through the publisher’s website at the link below. Copyright @ The Authors 2013.In the current work, data gleaned from an assistive technology (reminding technology), which has been evaluated with people with Dementia over a period of several years was retrospectively studied to extract the factors that contributed to successful adoption. The aim was to develop a prediction model with the capability of prospectively assessing whether the assistive technology would be suitable for persons with Dementia (and their carer), based on user characteristics, needs and perceptions. Such a prediction tool has the ability to empower a formal carer to assess, through a very limited amount of questions, whether the technology will be adopted and used.EPSR
Saliency Benchmarking Made Easy: Separating Models, Maps and Metrics
Dozens of new models on fixation prediction are published every year and
compared on open benchmarks such as MIT300 and LSUN. However, progress in the
field can be difficult to judge because models are compared using a variety of
inconsistent metrics. Here we show that no single saliency map can perform well
under all metrics. Instead, we propose a principled approach to solve the
benchmarking problem by separating the notions of saliency models, maps and
metrics. Inspired by Bayesian decision theory, we define a saliency model to be
a probabilistic model of fixation density prediction and a saliency map to be a
metric-specific prediction derived from the model density which maximizes the
expected performance on that metric given the model density. We derive these
optimal saliency maps for the most commonly used saliency metrics (AUC, sAUC,
NSS, CC, SIM, KL-Div) and show that they can be computed analytically or
approximated with high precision. We show that this leads to consistent
rankings in all metrics and avoids the penalties of using one saliency map for
all metrics. Our method allows researchers to have their model compete on many
different metrics with state-of-the-art in those metrics: "good" models will
perform well in all metrics.Comment: published at ECCV 201
Self-bound dense objects in holographic QCD
We study a self-bound dense object in the hard wall model. We consider a
spherically symmetric dense object which is characterized by its radial density
distribution and non-uniform but spherically symmetric chiral condensate. For
this we analytically solve the partial differential equations in the hard wall
model and read off the radial coordinate dependence of the density and chiral
condensate according to the AdS/CFT correspondence. We then attempt to describe
nucleon density profiles of a few nuclei within our framework and observe that
the confinement scale changes from a free nucleon to a nucleus. We briefly
discuss how to include the effect of higher dimensional operator into our
study. We finally comment on possible extensions of our work.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures, figures replaced, minor revision, to appear in
JHE
Improving the scalability of parallel N-body applications with an event driven constraint based execution model
The scalability and efficiency of graph applications are significantly
constrained by conventional systems and their supporting programming models.
Technology trends like multicore, manycore, and heterogeneous system
architectures are introducing further challenges and possibilities for emerging
application domains such as graph applications. This paper explores the space
of effective parallel execution of ephemeral graphs that are dynamically
generated using the Barnes-Hut algorithm to exemplify dynamic workloads. The
workloads are expressed using the semantics of an Exascale computing execution
model called ParalleX. For comparison, results using conventional execution
model semantics are also presented. We find improved load balancing during
runtime and automatic parallelism discovery improving efficiency using the
advanced semantics for Exascale computing.Comment: 11 figure
Frequent burning promotes invasions of alien plants into a mesic African savanna
Fire is both inevitable and necessary for maintaining the structure and functioning of mesic savannas. Without disturbances such as fire and herbivory, tree cover can increase at the expense of grass cover and over time dominate mesic savannas. Consequently, repeated burning is widely used to suppress tree recruitment and control bush encroachment. However, the effect of regular burning on invasion by alien plant species is little understood. Here, vegetation data from a long-term fire experiment, which began in 1953 in a mesic Zimbabwean savanna, were used to test whether the frequency of burning promoted alien plant invasion. The fire treatments consisted of late season fires, lit at 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-year intervals, and these regularly burnt plots were compared with unburnt plots. Results show that over half a century of frequent burning promoted the invasion by alien plants relative to areas where fire was excluded. More alien plant species became established in plots that had a higher frequency of burning. The proportion of alien species in the species assemblage was highest in the annually burnt plots followed by plots burnt biennially. Alien plant invasion was lowest in plots protected from fire but did not differ significantly between plots burnt triennially and quadrennially. Further, the abundance of five alien forbs increased significantly as the interval (in years) between fires became shorter. On average, the density of these alien forbs in annually burnt plots was at least ten times as high as the density of unburnt plots. Plant diversity was also altered by long-term burning. Total plant species richness was significantly lower in the unburnt plots compared to regularly burnt plots. These findings suggest that frequent burning of mesic savannas enhances invasion by alien plants, with short intervals between fires favouring alien forbs. Therefore, reducing the frequency of burning may be a key to minimising the risk of alien plant spread into mesic savannas, which is important because invasive plants pose a threat to native biodiversity and may alter savanna functioning
Self Assembly and Properties of C:WO3 Nano-Platelets and C:VO2/V2O5 Triangular Capsules Produced by Laser Solution Photolysis
Laser photolysis of WCl6 in ethanol and a specific mixture of V2O5 and VCl3 in ethanol lead to carbon modified vanadium and tungsten oxides with interesting properties. The presence of graphene’s aromatic rings (from the vibrational frequency of 1,600 cm−1) together with C–C bonding of carbon (from the Raman shift of 1,124 cm−1) present unique optical, vibrational, electronic and structural properties of the intended tungsten trioxide and vanadium dioxide materials. The morphology of these samples shows nano-platelets in WOx samples and, in VOx samples, encapsulated spherical quantum dots in conjunction with fullerenes of VOx. Conductivity studies revealed that the VO2/V2O5 nanostructures are more sensitive to Cl than to the presence of ethanol, whereas the C:WO3 nano-platelets are more sensitive to ethanol than atomic C
Intergenerational change and familial aggregation of body mass index
The relationship between parental BMI and that of their adult offspring, when increased adiposity can become a clinical issue, is unknown. We investigated the intergenerational change in body mass index (BMI) distribution, and examined the sex-specific relationship
between parental and adult offspring BMI. Intergenerational
change in the distribution of adjusted BMI in 1,443
complete families (both parents and at least one offspring)
with 2,286 offspring (1,263 daughters and 1,023 sons) from
the west of Scotland, UK, was investigated using quantile
regression. Familial correlations were estimated from
linear mixed effects regression models. The distribution
of BMI showed little intergenerational change in the normal
range (\25 kg/m2), decreasing overweightness (25–
\30 kg/m2) and increasing obesity (C30 kg/m2). Median
BMI was static across generations in males and decreased
in females by 0.4 (95% CI: 0.0, 0.7) kg/m2; the 95th percentileincreased by 2.2 (1.1, 3.2) kg/m2 in males and 2.7
(1.4, 3.9) kg/m2 in females. Mothers’ BMI was more
strongly associated with daughters’ BMI than was fathers’
(correlation coefficient (95% CI): mothers 0.31 (0.27,
0.36), fathers 0.19 (0.14, 0.25); P = 0.001). Mothers’ and
fathers’ BMI were equally correlated with sons’ BMI
(correlation coefficient: mothers 0.28 (0.22, 0.33), fathers
0.27 (0.22, 0.33). The increase in BMI between generations
was concentrated at the upper end of the distribution. This,
alongside the strong parent-offspring correlation, suggests that the increase in BMI is disproportionally greater among
offspring of heavier parents. Familial influences on BMI among middle-aged women appear significantly stronger from mothers than father
Distances and ages of globular clusters using Hipparcos parallaxes of local subdwarfs
We discuss the impact of Population II and Globular Cluster (GCs) stars on
the derivation of the age of the Universe, and on the study of the formation
and early evolution of galaxies, our own in particular. The long-standing
problem of the actual distance scale to Population II stars and GCs is
addressed, and a variety of different methods commonly used to derive distances
to Population II stars are briefly reviewed. Emphasis is given to the
discussion of distances and ages for GCs derived using Hipparcos parallaxes of
local subdwarfs. Results obtained by different authors are slightly different,
depending on different assumptions about metallicity scale, reddenings, and
corrections for undetected binaries. These and other uncertainties present in
the method are discussed. Finally, we outline progress expected in the near
future.Comment: Invited review article to appear in: `Post-Hipparcos Cosmic Candles',
A. Heck & F. Caputo (Eds), Kluwer Academic Publ., Dordrecht, in press. 22
pages including 3 tables and 2 postscript figures, uses Kluwer's crckapb.sty
LaTeX style file, enclose
The Regge Limit for Green Functions in Conformal Field Theory
We define a Regge limit for off-shell Green functions in quantum field
theory, and study it in the particular case of conformal field theories (CFT).
Our limit differs from that defined in arXiv:0801.3002, the latter being only a
particular corner of the Regge regime. By studying the limit for free CFTs, we
are able to reproduce the Low-Nussinov, BFKL approach to the pomeron at weak
coupling. The dominance of Feynman graphs where only two high momentum lines
are exchanged in the t-channel, follows simply from the free field analysis. We
can then define the BFKL kernel in terms of the two point function of a simple
light-like bilocal operator. We also include a brief discussion of the gravity
dual predictions for the Regge limit at strong coupling.Comment: 23 pages 2 figures, v2: Clarification of relation of the Regge limit
defined here and previous work in CFT. Clarification of causal orderings in
the limit. References adde
A computational framework to emulate the human perspective in flow cytometric data analysis
Background: In recent years, intense research efforts have focused on developing methods for automated flow cytometric data analysis. However, while designing such applications, little or no attention has been paid to the human perspective that is absolutely central to the manual gating process of identifying and characterizing cell populations. In particular, the assumption of many common techniques that cell populations could be modeled reliably with pre-specified distributions may not hold true in real-life samples, which can have populations of arbitrary shapes and considerable inter-sample variation.
<p/>Results: To address this, we developed a new framework flowScape for emulating certain key aspects of the human perspective in analyzing flow data, which we implemented in multiple steps. First, flowScape begins with creating a mathematically rigorous map of the high-dimensional flow data landscape based on dense and sparse regions defined by relative concentrations of events around modes. In the second step, these modal clusters are connected with a global hierarchical structure. This representation allows flowScape to perform ridgeline analysis for both traversing the landscape and isolating cell populations at different levels of resolution. Finally, we extended manual gating with a new capacity for constructing templates that can identify target populations in terms of their relative parameters, as opposed to the more commonly used absolute or physical parameters. This allows flowScape to apply such templates in batch mode for detecting the corresponding populations in a flexible, sample-specific manner. We also demonstrated different applications of our framework to flow data analysis and show its superiority over other analytical methods.
<p/>Conclusions: The human perspective, built on top of intuition and experience, is a very important component of flow cytometric data analysis. By emulating some of its approaches and extending these with automation and rigor, flowScape provides a flexible and robust framework for computational cytomics
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