Acquisition of conditioned responding in a multiple schedule depends on the reinforcement's temporal contingency with each stimulus

Forty mice acquired conditioned responses to stimuli presented in a multiple schedule with variable inter-trial intervals (ITIs). In some trials, reinforcement was preceded by a variable conditioned stimulus (CS), while other trials were reinforced following distinctive fixed-duration CS. A third stimulus was presented but never paired with reinforcement. Subjects in five groups experienced ITIs of different durations. Acquisition of responding to each stimulus depended only on the cycle-to-trial ratio (C/T), and thus on the temporal contingency of each stimulus. Acquisition was unaffected by whether CSs were of fixed or variable duration

INSIDE SOLARIS: THE PRESENCE OF GAME TECHNOLOGY IN ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN

Tarkovsky’s 1971 film Solaris is an exquisitely evocative meditation on the relationship between technology, memory and loss – not only through it’s presentation of the characters, narrative and themes of Stanislav Lem’s novel, but also through the specific qualities of film as a medium of perception (Tarkovsky). Tarkovsky’s oeuvre itself, particularly Nostalgia and Stalker, are tours-de-force in this respect. Yet there is always a melancholic distance between the viewer and the medium, perhaps impossible to traverse in any medium, but especially recognized in Tarkovsky’s work. This in fact is a key issue, as Doležel has outlined in his study of literature and possible worlds, in the understanding of the force of fictional constructs within the representative arts, including literature (Doležel). The need to explain how it is possible and necessary to construct possible worlds that have both representative similarities with the real world and with hylomorphic qualities (i.e. a purposive and necessary form) in and of themselves is an opportunity that the making of digital environments cannot avoid. This paper questions whether the same material for ‘world-making’ might be possible in persistent digital environments as there is in film. In the quest for an increasingly vivid experience of the presence of architecture, digital means of representation have achieved significant successes. Interestingly, there remains the opportunity to consider modes of digital realization as being sufficiently material within their mode of delivery – digital media. If we stay within the digital there are a number of modes by which its architectural product can be experienced. The question of this paper concerns the manner in which a recent mode of digital representation and exploration has developed: the game engine

Design, fabrication, and test of a composite material wind turbine rotor blade

The aerodynamic design, structural design, fabrication, and structural testing is described for a 60 foot long filament wound, fiberglass/epoxy resin matrix wind turbine rotor blade for a 125 foot diameter, 100 kW wind energy conversion system. One blade was fabricated which met all aerodynamic shape requirements and was structurally capable of operating under all specified design conditions. The feasibility of filament winding large rotor blades was demonstrated

Transforming Healthcare in Australia: The PeCC Initiative

Many of the current crises in contemporary healthcare management centre on issues concerning information management and costs. Electronic commerce (or e-commerce) activity, grounded in the development of the Internet, is challenging traditional management models and providing new paradigms and possible solutions for improved health care management. Australia’s health industry, like other economic sectors here and globally, is grasping the need to use IT and telecommunications with e-commerce strategies for improved cost-effective services to its key stakeholders. This paper addresses the changes occurring in Australia’s health care industry influenced by trends in information systems. While the Federal government’s recent report, From Telehealth to E-Health: The Unstoppable Rise of EHealth [3], outlines a diverse range of projects and practices, here the authors focus on Australia’s first Internet trading community, The Project Electronic Commerce and Communication for Healthcare, otherwise known as PeCC. This study is supported by an ARC Collaborative Grant. The Industry partner is IBM

A Privacy-Preserving Framework for Large-Scale Content-Based Information Retrieval Using K-Secure Sum Protocol

We propose a privacy protection framework for large-scale content-based information retrieval. It offers two layers of protection. To begin with, robust hash values are utilized as quiries to avoid uncovering unique content or features. Second, the customer can choose to exclude certain bits in a hash values to further expand the ambiguity for the server. Due to the reduced information, it is computationally difficult for the server to know the customer's interest. The server needs to give back the hash values of every single possible to the customer. The customer performs a search within the candidate list to locate the best match. Since just hash values are exchanged between the client and the server, the privacy of both sides is ensured. We present the idea of tunable privacy, where the privacy protection level can be balanced by policy. It is acknowledged through hash-based piecewise inverted indexing. The thought is to gap a highlight vector into pieces and list every piece with a sub hash value. Each sub hash value is connected with an inverted index list. The framework has been broadly tested using a large scale image database. We have assessed both retrieval performance and privacy-preserving performance for a specific content identification application. Two unique developments of robust hash algorithms are utilized. One depends on random projections; the other depends on the discrete wavelet transform. Both algorithm exhibit satisfactory performances in comparison with state-of-the-art retrieval performances. The outcomes demonstrate that the privacy upgrade somewhat enhances the retrieval performance. We consider the majority voting attack for evaluating the query category and identification. The test results demonstrate that this attack is a threat when there are close duplicities, yet the achievement rate diminishes with the quantity of discarded bits and the number of distinct items

The effects of maternal age and parity on birth weight in a tribal community of Kinwat, Nanded, Maharashtra, India

Background: Low birth weight is an important determinant of childhood morbidity and mortality. Birth weight is a significant factor that determines vulnerability of risk of childhood illness and survival. Objective of the study was to correlate the maternal age and parity on birth weight in a tribal community.Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out during April 2012 to June 2014 in More Nursing Home, Kinwat Dist. Nanded, Maharashtra. A total of 1611 patients from tribal area who delivered in the nursing home were enclosed for the study. Data was analyzed by using SSPS version-18.0.Results: In this study low birth weight babies were seen in 18.56% and 17.78% and 21.47% of female and male babies had low birth weight respectively, which was statistically significant.  Mean birth weight increased as parity of mother increased. Low birth weight babies were born to the mother of younger age which was statistically significant.Conclusions: Health care of young age tribal mothers is important factor in curbing low birth weight babies

SARCS strong lensing galaxy groups: I - optical, weak lensing, and scaling laws

We present the weak lensing and optical analysis of the SL2S-ARCS (SARCS) sample of strong lens candidates. The sample is based on the Strong Lensing Legacy Survey (SL2S), a systematic search of strong lensing systems in the photometric Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey (CFHTLS). The SARCS sample focuses on arc-like features and is designed to contain mostly galaxy groups. We briefly present the weak lensing methodology that we use to estimate the mass of the SARCS objects. Among 126 candidates, we obtain a weak lensing detection for 89 objects with velocity dispersions of the Singular Isothermal Sphere mass model ranging from 350 to 1000 km/s with an average value of 600km/s, corresponding to a rich galaxy group (or poor cluster). From the galaxies belonging to the bright end of the group's red sequence (M_i<-21), we derive the optical properties of the SARCS candidates. We obtain typical richnesses of N=5-15 galaxies and optical luminosities of L=0.5-1.5e+12 Lsol (within a radius of 0.5 Mpc). We use these galaxies to compute luminosity density maps, from which a morphological classification reveals that a large fraction of the sample are groups with a complex light distribution, either elliptical or multimodal, suggesting that these objects are dynamically young structures. We finally combine the lensing and optical analyses to draw a sample of 80 most secure group candidates, i.e. weak lensing detection and over-density at the lens position in the luminosity map, to remove false detections and galaxy-scale systems from the initial sample. We use this reduced sample to probe the optical scaling relations in combination with a sample of massive galaxy clusters. We detect the expected correlations over the probed range in mass with a typical scatter of 25% in the SIS velocity dispersion at a given richness or luminosity, making these scaling laws interesting mass proxie