12,838 research outputs found
Designing and Developing a Mobile-Cloud E-Learning Application
The mobile-cloud E-Learning application is an application software which can be
downloaded into a mobile phone or a smart phone. This application software functions with the
presence of a network, which is the Internet. The objectives of this project are to study on how
the contents of the current existing E-Learning can be adapted to the mobile phones/smart
phones which will then lead to designing and developing the contents of the mobile E-Learning
application to suit the small screens of the mobile phones/smart phones using the cloud
computing concept. This objective was made due to the problems identified during the research
of the limitations of the current E-Learning system which are usability and accessibility
problems. The scope of this study is to design and develop a mobile-cloud E-Learning
application for the specifications of the BlackBerry OS 6 with the functions of viewing and
posting announcements as well as downloading and uploading lecture notes by students,
lecturers and management staffs respectively. The methodology used for the research are
distributing online questionnaire and conducting interviews. On the other hand, the project
methodology chosen is the prototyping method which requires users’ participation. Finally, up to
date, the distributed online showed positive response from the responders whereby they support
the mobile version of the E-Learning system
A tunnel and a traffic jam: How transition disks maintain a detectable warm dust component despite the presence of a large planet-carved gap
We combined hydrodynamical simulations of planet-disk interactions with dust
evolution models that include coagulation and fragmentation of dust grains over
a large range of radii and derived observational properties using radiative
transfer calculations. We studied the role of the snow line in the survival of
the inner disk of transition disks. Inside the snow line, the lack of ice
mantles in dust particles decreases the sticking efficiency between grains. As
a consequence, particles fragment at lower collision velocities than in regions
beyond the snow line. This effect allows small particles to be maintained for
up to a few Myrs within the first astronomical unit. These particles are
closely coupled to the gas and do not drift significantly with respect to the
gas. For lower mass planets (1), the pre-transition appearance
can be maintained even longer because dust still trickles through the gap
created by the planet, moves invisibly and quickly in the form of relatively
large grains through the gap, and becomes visible again as it fragments and
gets slowed down inside of the snow line. The global study of dust evolution of
a disk with an embedded planet, including the changes of the dust aerodynamics
near the snow line, can explain the concentration of millimetre-sized particles
in the outer disk and the survival of the dust in the inner disk if a large
dust trap is present in the outer disk. This behaviour solves the conundrum of
the combination of both near-infrared excess and ring-like millimetre emission
observed in several transition disks.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A (including acknowledgments
Comparison of the TaqMan and LightCycler systems in pharmacogenetic testing: evaluation of the CYP2C9*2/*3 polymorphisms.
Background: Pharmacogenetic testing for drugmetabolizing enzymes is not yet widely used in clinical practice. Methods: In an attempt to facilitate the application of this procedure, we have compared two real-time PCRbased methods, the TaqMan_ and the LightCycler_ for the pharmacogenetic evaluation of CYP2C9*2/*3 polymorphisms. Results and Conclusion: Both procedures are suitable for pharmacogenetic studies. The TaqMan procedure was less expensive in terms of cost per sample, but the TaqMan apparatus is more expensive than the LightCycler apparatus
Like grandparents, like parents: Empirical evidence and psychoanalytic thinking on the transmission of parenting styles
The authors discuss the issue of intergenerational transmission of parenting from an empirical and psychoanalytic perspective. After presenting a framework to explain their conception of parenting, they describe intergenerational transmission of parenting as a key to interpreting and eventually changing parenting behaviors. Then they present (1) the empirical approach aimed at determining if there is actually a stability across generations that contributes to harsh parenting and eventually maltreatment and (2) the psyphoanalytic thinking that seeks to explain the continuity in terms of representations and clinical phenomena. The authors also discuss the relationship between the attachment and the caregiving systems and hypothesize a common base for the two systems in childhood experience. Finally, they propose the psychoanalytic perspective as a fruitful theoretical framework to integrate the evidence for the neurophysiological mediators and moderators of intergenerational transmission. Psychoanalytically informed research can provide clinically relevant insights and hypotheses to be tested
The Impact of Child Labor and School Quality on Academic Achievement in Brazil
We analyze the impact of child labor on school achievement using Brazilian school achievement test data from the 2003 Sistema Nacional de Avaliação da Educação Básica (SAEB). We control for the endogeneity of child labor using instrumental variable techniques, where the instrumental variable is the average wage for unskilled male labor in the state. Using our preferred OLS estimates, we find that child labor causes a loss in students' school achievement. Children and adolescents who do not work have better school performance than students who work. Up to two hours of work per day do not have a statistically significant effect on school performance, but additional hours decrease student's achievement. Differences in work conditions affect school performance. For high school students in Portuguese, compared to students who have schooling as their only activity, students who work only at home score 4 percent lower on the tests. Those students who only work outside the house are worse off than those who only work within the house, with test scores decreasing by 5 percent. Students who work both inside and outside the house have the lowest test scores of all the working conditions, decreasing by up to 7 percent.child labor, school achievement, Brazil
Influence of molecular temperature on the coherence of fullerenes in a near-field interferometer
We study C70 fullerene matter waves in a Talbot-Lau interferometer as a
function of their temperature. While the ideal fringe visibility is observed at
moderate molecular temperatures, we find a gradual degradation of the
interference contrast if the molecules are heated before entering the
interferometer. A method is developed to assess the distribution of the
micro-canonical temperatures of the molecules in free flight. This way the
heating-dependent reduction of interference contrast can be compared with the
predictions of quantum theory. We find that the observed loss of coherence
agrees quantitatively with the expected decoherence rate due to the thermal
radiation emitted by the hot molecules.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure
The mtDNA 15497 G/A polymorphism in cytochrome b in severe obese subjects from Southern Italy.
Background and aim: A large number of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
mutations have been implicated in degenerative diseases and aging. The aim of this
study was to evaluate whether the 15497 G/A mtDNA polymorphism (G251S) in the
cytochrome b subunit of respiratory complex III, which has been associated with
obesity-related variables and lipid metabolism in a Japanese population, is
associated with severe obesity also in adult Caucasians from southern Italy.
Methods and results: Unrelated severely obese patients (n Z 317; BMI > 40 kg/m2)
and controls (n Z 217; BMI < 25 kg/m2) from Southern Italy were genotyped by
allelic discrimination TaqMan assay for the 15497 G/A mtDNA polymorphism. In
obese patients fasting serum total cholesterol, triglycerides, HDL-cholesterol and
glucose were measured enzymatically and sitting blood pressure and heart rate
were also collected. Mean levels of total cholesterol, triglycerides and glucose were
below the upper reference limit for healthy subjects. Female obese subjects
showed lower levels of blood pressure and heart rate and higher levels of
HDL cholesterol than male obese patients (P < 0.001). All the control subjects and 315/317 severely obese patients were homozygous for the G allele (wild type),
whereas only 2/317, were females homozygous for the A allele.
Conclusions: The mtDNA 15497 G/A polymorphism in cytochrome b was present in
0.6% obese subjects, two females whose lipid parameters and BMI were similar to
those of the overall group. Therefore, this mutation may appear to contribute in
rare instances to severe obesity but does not explain the majority of cases in our
population. A more extensive genetic haplogroup characterization is required to
identify associations to obesity in Caucasians
Recycling Parrondo games
We consider a deterministic realization of Parrondo games and use periodic
orbit theory to analyze their asymptotic behavior.Comment: 12 pages, 9 figure
Optimized FPGA Implementation of Model Predictive Control for Embedded Systems Using High-Level Synthesis Tool
Model predictive control (MPC) is an optimization-based strategy for high-performance control that is attracting increasing interest. While MPC requires the online solution of an optimization problem, its ability to handle multivariable systems and constraints makes it a very powerful control strategy specially for MPC of embedded systems, which have an ever increasing amount of sensing and computation capabilities. We argue that the implementation of MPC on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) using automatic tools is nowadays possible, achieving cost-effective successful applications on fast or resource-constrained systems. The main burden for the implementation of MPC on FPGAs is the challenging design of the necessary algorithms. We outline an approach to achieve a software-supported optimized implementation of MPC on FPGAs using high-level synthesis tools and automatic code generation. The proposed strategy exploits the arithmetic operations necessaries to solve optimization problems to tailor an FPGA design, which allows a tradeoff between energy, memory requirements, cost, and achievable speed. We show the capabilities and the simplicity of use of the proposed methodology on two different examples and illustrate its advantages over a microcontroller implementation
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