5,869 research outputs found
Sinuosity and the affect grid: A method for adjusting repeated mood scores
Copyright @ 2012 Ammons Scientific. The article can be accessed from the links below.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Sinuosity is a measure of how much a travelled pathway deviates from a straight line. In this paper, sinuosity is applied to the measurement of mood. The Affect Grid is a mood scale that requires participants to place a mark on a 9 x 9 grid to indicate their current mood. The grid has two dimensions: pleasure-displeasure (horizontal) and arousal-sleepiness (vertical). In studies where repeated measurements are required, some participants may exaggerate their mood shifts due to faulty interpretation of the scale or a feeling of social obligation to the experimenter. A new equation is proposed, based on the sinuosity measure in hydrology, a measure of the meandering of rivers. The equation takes into account an individual's presumed tendency to exaggerate and meander to correct the score and reduce outliers. The usefulness of the equation is demonstrated by applying it to Affect Grid data from another study.This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund
Randomized benchmarking of single and multi-qubit control in liquid-state NMR quantum information processing
Being able to quantify the level of coherent control in a proposed device
implementing a quantum information processor (QIP) is an important task for
both comparing different devices and assessing a device's prospects with
regards to achieving fault-tolerant quantum control. We implement in a
liquid-state nuclear magnetic resonance QIP the randomized benchmarking
protocol presented by Knill et al (PRA 77: 012307 (2008)). We report an error
per randomized pulse of with a
single qubit QIP and show an experimentally relevant error model where the
randomized benchmarking gives a signature fidelity decay which is not possible
to interpret as a single error per gate. We explore and experimentally
investigate multi-qubit extensions of this protocol and report an average error
rate for one and two qubit gates of for a three
qubit QIP. We estimate that these error rates are still not decoherence limited
and thus can be improved with modifications to the control hardware and
software.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, submitted versio
CBT for people with intellectual disabilities : emerging evidence, cognitive ability and IQ effects
Historically people with intellectual disabilities have not been offered or received cognitive behavioural interventions that have been shown to be effective for mental health and emotional problems experienced by those without such disabilities. This is despite many people with intellectual disabilities having life experiences that potentially result in them having an increased risk to such problems. This paper discusses whether such therapeutic disdain is justified based on the evidence that is available and emerging concerning the application of cognitive behavioural interventions for this population. Issues concerning access to services, the ability of people with intellectual disabilities to engage in and benefit from the cognitive components of CBT, and the effect of cognitive abilities and IQ level on treatment effectiveness are explored in relation to this question
The VMC survey III : Mass-loss rates and luminosities of LMC AGB stars
Context. Asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars are major contributors to both the chemical enrichment of the interstellar medium and the integrated light of galaxies. Despite its importance, the AGB is one of the least understood phases of stellar evolution. The main difficulties associated with detailed modelling of the AGB are related to the mass-loss process and the 3rd dredge-up efficiency Aims. We provide direct measures of mass-loss rates and luminosities for a complete sample of AGB stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, disentangling the C- and O-rich stellar populations. Methods. Dust radiative transfer models are presented for all 374 AGB stars candidates in one of the fields observed by the new VISTA survey of the Magellanic Clouds (VMC). Mass-loss rates, luminosities and a classification of C-and O-rich stars are derived by fitting the models to the spectral energy distribution (SED) obtained by combining VMC data with existing optical, near-, and mid-infrared photometry. Results. The classification technique is reliable at a level of - at worst -75% and significantly better for the reddest dusty stars. We classified none of the stars with a relevant mass-loss rate as O-rich, and we can exclude the presence of more than one dusty O-rich star at a similar to 94% level. The bolometric luminosity function we obtained is fully consistent with most of the literature data on the LMC and with the prediction of theoretical models, with a peak of the C-star distribution at M-bol similar or equal to -4.8 mag and no stars brighter than the classical AGB tip, at M-bol = -7.1 mag. Conclusions. This exploratory study shows that our method provides reliable mass-loss rates, luminosities and chemical classifications for all AGB stars. These results offer already important constraints to AGB evolutionary models. Most of our conclusions, especially for the rarer dust-enshrouded extreme AGB stars, are however strongly limited by the relatively small area covered by our study. Forthcoming VMC observations will easily remove this limitation.Peer reviewe
Exposing Pharmacy Students to Public Health Concepts through Volunteering in the Medical Reserve Corps
Pharmacy students at the University of Kansas School of Pharmacy’s regional campus were exposed to the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), a volunteer-based network that organizes locally to improve the health and safety of their communities. The school partnered with the local Medical Reserve Corps to provide students’ opportunities to fulfill co-curricular requirements and facilitate an application-based learning environment for public health concepts. The objective of the study was to explore the relationship between volunteering in the MRC and pharmacy students’ ability to meet educational outcomes and reinforce beliefs about their profession’s role in public health. Twenty-one students completed a survey addressing their ability to meet educational outcomes and identify the role of pharmacists in public health. Pharmacy students strongly agreed their past participation (mean 4.57) and future volunteering (mean 4.48) within the MRC would continue to help them better understand their role in public health. Pharmacy students strongly agreed (means ranging from 4.43 to 4.71) that they were able to fulfill educational outcomes related to knowledge, skills, and attitudes pharmacy graduates should possess. The positive responses gathered warrants expanding the partnership to include more student healthcare disciplines as well as looking for further opportunities to engage students in public health initiatives. Pharmacy schools should look to adopt similar partnerships with MRC units
Efficient Symmetry Reduction and the Use of State Symmetries for Symbolic Model Checking
One technique to reduce the state-space explosion problem in temporal logic
model checking is symmetry reduction. The combination of symmetry reduction and
symbolic model checking by using BDDs suffered a long time from the
prohibitively large BDD for the orbit relation. Dynamic symmetry reduction
calculates representatives of equivalence classes of states dynamically and
thus avoids the construction of the orbit relation. In this paper, we present a
new efficient model checking algorithm based on dynamic symmetry reduction. Our
experiments show that the algorithm is very fast and allows the verification of
larger systems. We additionally implemented the use of state symmetries for
symbolic symmetry reduction. To our knowledge we are the first who investigated
state symmetries in combination with BDD based symbolic model checking
Viewing A Local Flora Digitally
In a world of increasing ‘plant blindness,’ many people, including university students, lack the background to recognize the native flora of a region. However, the availability of digital teaching and learning resources such as Moodle’s H5P activities increases the usefulness of online learning for even such experiential topics as field botany. Viewing local flora digitally is a project to create an online resource that will outline the recognition characters of the most species-rich families found in the Interior of BC, as well as many of the most common flowering plant species. The objective of this project was threefold: (1) to build a digital resource, available to both future TRU students and the greater community, (2) foster our own knowledge and appreciation of the Kamloops flora, and (3) develop the skills to build digital education resources. By working collaboratively, we were able to cover 21 of the most species-rich flowering plant families. For each flowering plant family included, this resource has outlined the recognition characters, unique features, and provided local examples of the family. Information was incorporated into interactive H5P activities and summative quizzes that serve to engage the student and reinforce the content. The activities and quizzes built in Moodle have the potential to be transferred to a more public domain, through platforms such as WordPress. The events of the last year have shown the importance of online teaching and learning resources. Not only has this project allowed us to develop the necessary vocabulary and skills to recognize our local flora but has allowed us to contribute to a resource that can be used by future students and the public. The development of accessible science helps not only the university but the community in which TRU resides
Anti-Candida targets and cytotoxicity of casuarinin isolated from Plinia cauliflora leaves in a bioactivity-guided study
Peer reviewedPublisher PD
The Large and Small Scale Structures of Dust in the Star-Forming Perseus Molecular Cloud
We present an analysis of ~3.5 square degrees of submillimetre continuum and
extinction data of the Perseus molecular cloud. We identify 58 clumps in the
submillimetre map and we identify 39 structures (`cores') and 11 associations
of structures (`super cores') in the extinction map. The cumulative mass
distributions of the submillimetre clumps and extinction cores have steep
slopes (alpha ~ 2 and 1.5 - 2 respectively), steeper than the Salpeter IMF
(alpha = 1.35), while the distribution of extinction super cores has a shallow
slope (alpha ~ 1). Most of the submillimetre clumps are well fit by stable
Bonnor-Ebert spheres with 10K < T < 19K and 5.5 < log_10(P_ext/k) < 6.0. The
clumps are found only in the highest column density regions (A_V > 5 - 7 mag),
although Bonnor-Ebert models suggest that we should have been able to detect
them at lower column densities if they exist. These observations provide a
stronger case for an extinction threshold than that found in analysis of less
sensitive observations of the Ophiuchus molecular cloud. The relationship
between submillimetre clumps and their parent extinction core has been
analyzed. The submillimetre clumps tend to lie offset from the larger
extinction peaks, suggesting the clumps formed via an external triggering
event, consistent with previous observations.Comment: 38 pages, 12 figures, accepted by Astrophysical Journal slight
changes to original due to a slight 3" error in the coordinates of the SCUBA
ma
Information-theoretic equilibration: the appearance of irreversibility under complex quantum dynamics
The question of how irreversibility can emerge as a generic phenomena when
the underlying mechanical theory is reversible has been a long-standing
fundamental problem for both classical and quantum mechanics. We describe a
mechanism for the appearance of irreversibility that applies to coherent,
isolated systems in a pure quantum state. This equilibration mechanism requires
only an assumption of sufficiently complex internal dynamics and natural
information-theoretic constraints arising from the infeasibility of collecting
an astronomical amount of measurement data. Remarkably, we are able to prove
that irreversibility can be understood as typical without assuming decoherence
or restricting to coarse-grained observables, and hence occurs under distinct
conditions and time-scales than those implied by the usual decoherence point of
view. We illustrate the effect numerically in several model systems and prove
that the effect is typical under the standard random-matrix conjecture for
complex quantum systems.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures. Discussion has been clarified and additional
numerical evidence for information theoretic equilibration is provided for a
variant of the Heisenberg model as well as one and two-dimensional random
local Hamiltonian
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