Teaching Perspective Taking Skills to Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often lack perspective taking skills as evidenced by deficits in social communication and social interaction. The PEAK-T program Deictic: Single-Reversal I and You has previously been utilized to teach and establish singular I-YOU perspective taking repertoires in children with ASD, however no such studies exist for teaching plural WE-THEY perspective taking repertoires. The present study replicated the methods from a previous study (Belisle et al., 2016) to establish simple and single-reversal I-YOU deictic relations, and extended the evaluation to establish simple and single-reversal WE-THEY deictic relations. Of the four participants in this study, one participant was able to demonstrate single-reversal I-YOU and WE-THEY deictic relations. Additionally, this participant was able to demonstrate a transfer of function of these deictic relations to a novel stimulus set. Three of the four participants were unable to demonstrate mastery criteria for both I-YOU and WE-THEY single-reversal deictic relations, even after exposure to mixed training. These results indicate that some children with ASD could benefit from deictic relational training instruction through transfer of functions from I-YOU relations to WE-THEY relations, but others may require additional training and/or prerequisite skills

Energy reconstruction on the LHC ATLAS TileCal upgraded front end: feasibility study for a sROD co-processing unit

Dissertation presented in ful lment of the requirements for the degree of: Master of Science in Physics 2016The Phase-II upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in the early 2020s will enable an order of magnitude increase in the data produced, unlocking the potential for new physics discoveries. In the ATLAS detector, the upgraded Hadronic Tile Calorimeter (TileCal) Phase-II front end read out system is currently being prototyped to handle a total data throughput of 5.1 TB/s, from the current 20.4 GB/s. The FPGA based Super Read Out Driver (sROD) prototype must perform an energy reconstruction algorithm on 2.88 GB/s raw data, or 275 million events per second. Due to the very high level of pro ciency required and time consuming nature of FPGA rmware development, it may be more e ective to implement certain complex energy reconstruction and monitoring algorithms on a general purpose, CPU based sROD co-processor. Hence, the feasibility of a general purpose ARM System on Chip based co-processing unit (PU) for the sROD is determined in this work. A PCI-Express test platform was designed and constructed to link two ARM Cortex-A9 SoCs via their PCI-Express Gen-2 x1 interfaces. Test results indicate that the latency of the PCI-Express interface is su ciently low and the data throughput is superior to that of alternative interfaces such as Ethernet, for use as an interconnect for the SoCs to the sROD. CPU performance benchmarks were performed on ve ARM development platforms to determine the CPU integer, oating point and memory system performance as well as energy e ciency. To complement the benchmarks, Fast Fourier Transform and Optimal Filtering (OF) applications were also tested. Based on the test results, in order for the PU to process 275 million events per second with OF, within the 6 s timing budget of the ATLAS triggering system, a cluster of three Tegra-K1, Cortex-A15 SoCs connected to the sROD via a Gen-2 x8 PCI-Express interface would be suitable. A high level design for the PU is proposed which surpasses the requirements for the sROD co-processor and can also be used in a general purpose, high data throughput system, with 80 Gb/s Ethernet and 15 GB/s PCI-Express throughput, using four X-Gene SoCs

Bacterial Quality of Private Water Wells in Clark County, Arkansas

Most private water wells in Clark County appeared to be contaminated by bacteria, apparently entering the wells from surface water seepage. Eighteen to 24% of the wells investigated were positive for fecal contamination. Deeper wells were less often contaminated. More than one-half of the wells sampled exceeded recommended limits of inorganic chemicals for safe potable water. High concentrations of iron and manganese were most common, exceeding recommended limits in more than 40% of the well

Creation and characterization of vector vortex modes for classical and quantum communication

Vector vortex beams are structured states of light that are non-separable in their polarisation and spatial mode, they are eigenmodes of free-space and many fibre systems, and have the capacity to be used as a modal basis for both classical and quantum communication. Here we outline recent progress in our understanding of these modes, from their creation to their characterization and detection. We then use these tools to study the propagation behaviour of such modes in free-space and optical fibre and show that modal cross-talk results in a decay of vector states into separable scalar modes, with a concomitant loss of information. We present a comparison between probabilistic and deterministic detection schemes showing that the former, while ubiquitous, negates the very benefit of increased dimensionality in quantum communication while reducing signal in classical communication links. This work provides a useful introduction to the field as well as presenting new findings and perspectives to advance it further

Green Leaf Grocery - Executive Compensation Case Study

The primary purpose of this teaching case is to aid students in understanding how executive compensation plans are utilized to achieve organizational goals and to then construct their own executive compensation plan for the CEO of Greenleaf Grocery, a fictional retail business based on an actual company. Students have the opportunity to create a comprehensive executive compensation plan using salary, bonuses, stock options, benefits, and other compensation tools.  Additionally, the case provides the opportunity to discuss the use of both short-term and long-term incentive compensation.  The company in this case is poised to undertake an initial public offering of stock and retaining the current CEO is viewed as critical for this next phase.    The case affords the class the opportunity to explore ethical issues in executive compensation as well as other aspects of the organization’s overall compensation structure. &nbsp

A space division multiplexed free-space-optical communication system that can auto-locate and fully self align with a remote transceiver

Free-Space Optical (FSO) systems offer the ability to distribute high speed digital links into remote and rural communities where terrain, installation cost or infrastructure security pose critical hurdles to deployment. A challenge in any point-to-point FSO system is initiating and maintaining optical alignment from the sender to the receiver. In this paper we propose and demonstrate a low-complexity self-aligning FSO prototype that can completely self-align with no requirement for initial manual positioning and could therefore form the opto-mechanical basis for a mesh network of optical transceivers. The prototype utilises off-the-shelf consumer electrical components and a bespoke alignment algorithm. We demonstrate an eight fibre spatially multiplexed link with a loss of 15 dB over 210 m

Crystal structure of the ϵ subunit of the proton-translocating ATP synthase from Escherichia coli

AbstractBackground: Proton-translocating ATP synthases convert the energy generated from photosynthesis or respiration into ATP. These enzymes, termed F0F1-ATPases, are structurally highly conserved. In Escherichia coli, F0F1-ATPase consists of a membrane portion, F0, made up of three different polypeptides (a, b and c) and an F1 portion comprising five different polypeptides in the stoichiometry α3β3γδϵ. The minor subunits γ, δ and ϵ are required for the coupling of proton translocation with ATP synthesis; the ϵ subunit is in close contact with the α, β , γ and c subunits. The structure of the ϵ subunit provides clues to its essential role in this complex enzyme.Results: The structure of the E. coli F0F1-ATPase ϵ subunit has been solved at 2.3 Å resolution by multiple isomorphous replacement. The structure, comprising residues 2–136 of the polypeptide chain and 14 water molecules, refined to an R value of 0.214 (Rfree = 0.288). The molecule has a novel fold with two domains. The N-terminal domain is a β sandwich with two five-stranded sheets. The C-terminal domain is formed from two α helices arranged in an antiparallel coiled-coil. A series of alanine residues from each helix form the central contacting residues in the helical domain and can be described as an ‘alanine zipper’. There is an extensive hydrophobic contact region between the two domains providing a stable interface. The individual domains of the crystal structure closely resemble the structures determined in solution by NMR spectroscopy.Conclusions: Sequence alignments of a number of ϵ subunits from diverse sources suggest that the C-terminal domain, which is absent in some species, is not essential for function. In the crystal the N-terminal domains of two ϵ subunits make a close hydrophobic interaction across a crystallographic twofold axis. This region has previously been proposed as the contact surface between the ϵ and γ subunits in the complete F1-ATPase complex. In the crystal structure, we observe what is apparently a stable interface between the two domains of the ϵ subunit, consistent with the fact that the crystal and solution structures are quite similar despite close crystal packing. This suggests that a gross conformational change in the ϵ subunit, to transmit the effect of proton translocation to the catalytic domain, is unlikely, but cannot be ruled out

Hamiltonian spectral flows, the Maslov index, and the stability of standing waves in the nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation

We use the Maslov index to study the spectrum of a class of linear Hamiltonian differential operators. We provide a lower bound on the number of positive real eigenvalues, which includes a contribution to the Maslov index from a non-regular crossing. A close study of the eigenvalue curves, which represent the evolution of the eigenvalues as the domain is shrunk or expanded, yields formulas for their concavity at the non-regular crossing in terms of the corresponding Jordan chains. This, along with homotopy techniques, enables the computation of the Maslov index at such a crossing. We apply our theory to study the spectral (in)stability of standing waves in the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation on a compact spatial interval. We derive new stability results in the spirit of the Jones--Grillakis instability theorem and the Vakhitov--Kolokolov criterion, both originally formulated on the real line. A fundamental difference upon passing from the real line to the compact interval is the loss of translational invariance, in which case the zero eigenvalue of the linearised operator is geometrically simple. Consequently, the stability results differ depending on the boundary conditions satisfied by the wave. We compare our lower bound to existing results involving constrained eigenvalue counts, finding a direct relationship between the correction factors found therein and the objects of our analysis, including the second-order Maslov crossing form.Comment: 48 pages, 8 figure