A Comparison of Symptom Profiles in Probands with 16p11.2 Deletion and Duplication Syndromes: Repetitive Behavior and Psychosis Proneness

The present study examines two classes of behavior in probands with the 16p11.2 duplication and deletion: repetitive behavior and psychosis spectrum behavior. It was hypothesized that 1.) deletion and duplication cases will differ significantly in the means and profiles of repetitive behaviors across five subscales and 2.)16p11.2 duplication cases will exhibit more schizotypal traits than the deletion cases. Data on 94 total participants was obtained from the Simmons Variation Individuals Project. Three scales were used to measure behavior: the Childhood Routines Inventory-Revised, the Childhood Oxford-Liverpool Inventory of Feelings and Experiences, and the Child Behavior Checklist. Data analysis was conducted using 2x3 Mixed ANOVAs and Linear Regressions. Results from these tests showed strong evidence that deletion and duplication of 16p11.2 yield differing neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric conditions. Duplication cases were more symptomatic in both repetitive behavior and psychosis spectrum behavior. Overall, the study found that copy number variation in the 16p11.2 region presents a risk for a variety of psychiatric symptoms in children and shows the importance of dimensional approaches in understanding the behavioral phenotypes of genetic syndromes

Using Utility Theory to Evaluate IVR Menu Structure and Reduce Driving Distraction

It has been shown that drivers often exhibit degraded driving performance while concurrently engaging in secondary tasks, such as talking on a mobile phone using navigation systems and other in-vehicle devices. As there seem to be limited solutions at present to hasten or limit these behaviors, this paper outlines how utility theory can be applied to design more efficient and understandable menus. To determine the value of information presented by an interface menu, the frequency of using information in the menu (goals) and the amount of effort it takes to accomplish these goals are quantified for each type of information. This paper outlines a utility analysis that compares the current Minnesota 511 traveler information system and an alternative design intended to improve the user experience and lighten the cognitive load of drivers. The analysis indicated that the proposed changes in design increase value to the user by helping them more efficiently find and identify requested information. Designers can use this technique in order to increase the value of menu information, and in turn help users find and identify requested information more efficiently. It is hoped that more efficient menus will reduce the amount of time and attention that drivers spend using them, allowing for increased attention on the primary task of driving

Effects of Cell Phone Conversation Difficulty on Driving Performance

The literature has shown that conversations and verbal tasks degrade the driver’s ability to maintain control of the vehicle and avoid hazardous conditions. However, the question of how the difficulty (or intensity) of a conversation relates to decrements in driving performance needs further investigation. Other studies have shown that conversations may hinder driving, but these were unable to quantify a difficulty threshold at which conversations and verbal tasks became more hazardous. This study compared two quantifiably different levels of conversation difficulty and a non-conversing condition over measures of driving performance and mental workload. This study used a GlobalSim Corporation driving simulator, allowing participants full control of the vehicle on two lane roads in a rural setting. Driving conditions were set up and controlled in order to determine the extent to which conversation had an effect on driving performance, which was assessed in terms of steering and speed-maintenance ability and the ability to deal with hazardous situations. We compared driving performance when participants were not conversing to when they were conversing, as well as whether a more difficult conversation had a greater effect on performance than an easier one. Participants conversed with the experimenter over a hands-free headset. Conversations consisted of answering and conversing based on either easy (“small talk”) or difficult (“thought provoking”) questions. Participants drove a simulated car for approximately thirty minutes, with ten minutes devoted to driving under each of the conversation conditions (no talking, easy conversation, difficult conversation). During each of the ten minute driving sessions, participants were exposed to one of three hazardous events: an ambulance running a red light in front of the driver, an oncoming car swerving into the driver’s lane, and a parallel-parked car pulling out in front of the driver. A variety of variables were measured in the categories of speed maintenance (accelerator position variability, speed variability, average speed), lane position maintenance (steering offset, average lateral speed), crash avoidance (collisions, response time to hazardous events), and mental workload (RSME). Two double multivariate ANOVAs were conducted, and then planned contrast analyses were used to test how the conversation levels affected each dependent measure. While concurrently driving and conversing, participants had higher variation in their steering and speed than when driving without conversing. While driving and conversing, participants also drove at slower average speeds and reported having to exert higher mental effort. No significant differences between conversation and non-conversation conditions were found for collisions or response time to hazards. When comparing the difficult and easy conversation conditions, the only significant difference in driving performance was for speed variation—participants showed more speed variation during difficult than during easy conversations. The findings from this study suggest that having a conversation over a hands-free phone while driving may cause decrements in steering and speed maintenance performance. Also, people thought that talking on a cell phone while driving was more mentally demanding than driving while not talking. These findings suggest that regardless of conversation intensity, driving performance will be affected by this attentional distraction both through actual decrements in performance as well as in perceived distraction from the driving task. It seems to be something about the act of talking, as opposed to the content of the material, that is detrimental to driving performance. This is consistent with other research (Briem & Hedman, 1995; Irwin, Fitzgerald, & Burg, 2000; McKnight & McKnight, 1993) that has found effects for conversations but little or no effect of varying conversational difficulty

Effects of Cell Phone Conversation Difficulty on Driving Performance

The literature has shown that conversations and verbal tasks degrade the driver’s ability to maintain control of the vehicle and avoid hazardous conditions. However, the question of how the difficulty (or intensity) of a conversation relates to decrements in driving performance needs further investigation. Other studies have shown that conversations may hinder driving, but these were unable to quantify a difficulty threshold at which conversations and verbal tasks became more hazardous. This study compared two quantifiably different levels of conversation difficulty and a non-conversing condition over measures of driving performance and mental workload. This study used a GlobalSim Corporation driving simulator, allowing participants full control of the vehicle on two lane roads in a rural setting. Driving conditions were set up and controlled in order to determine the extent to which conversation had an effect on driving performance, which was assessed in terms of steering and speed-maintenance ability and the ability to deal with hazardous situations. We compared driving performance when participants were not conversing to when they were conversing, as well as whether a more difficult conversation had a greater effect on performance than an easier one. Participants conversed with the experimenter over a hands-free headset. Conversations consisted of answering and conversing based on either easy (“small talk”) or difficult (“thought provoking”) questions. Participants drove a simulated car for approximately thirty minutes, with ten minutes devoted to driving under each of the conversation conditions (no talking, easy conversation, difficult conversation). During each of the ten minute driving sessions, participants were exposed to one of three hazardous events: an ambulance running a red light in front of the driver, an oncoming car swerving into the driver’s lane, and a parallel-parked car pulling out in front of the driver. A variety of variables were measured in the categories of speed maintenance (accelerator position variability, speed variability, average speed), lane position maintenance (steering offset, average lateral speed), crash avoidance (collisions, response time to hazardous events), and mental workload (RSME). Two double multivariate ANOVAs were conducted, and then planned contrast analyses were used to test how the conversation levels affected each dependent measure. While concurrently driving and conversing, participants had higher variation in their steering and speed than when driving without conversing. While driving and conversing, participants also drove at slower average speeds and reported having to exert higher mental effort. No significant differences between conversation and non-conversation conditions were found for collisions or response time to hazards. When comparing the difficult and easy conversation conditions, the only significant difference in driving performance was for speed variation—participants showed more speed variation during difficult than during easy conversations. The findings from this study suggest that having a conversation over a hands-free phone while driving may cause decrements in steering and speed maintenance performance. Also, people thought that talking on a cell phone while driving was more mentally demanding than driving while not talking. These findings suggest that regardless of conversation intensity, driving performance will be affected by this attentional distraction both through actual decrements in performance as well as in perceived distraction from the driving task. It seems to be something about the act of talking, as opposed to the content of the material, that is detrimental to driving performance. This is consistent with other research (Briem & Hedman, 1995; Irwin, Fitzgerald, & Burg, 2000; McKnight & McKnight, 1993) that has found effects for conversations but little or no effect of varying conversational difficulty

Identifying Fatality Factors of Rural and Urban Safety Cultures

The fatality rate in rural areas is considerably higher than it is in urban areas. In order to better understand the differences and similarities between attitudes and behaviors of drivers in different geographic areas, a large scale survey was conducted in both rural and urban counties within the state of Minnesota. As part of this survey, recipients were asked to rate the frequency and dangerousness of risk factors that play a role in fatal crashes. They were also asked to rate how effective and desirable a number of proposed safety interventions would be in their own communities. Though both urban and rural drivers reported practicing various unsafe driving behaviors, rural drivers engaged in particular factors, such as not wearing a safety belt, and did not recognize the true extent of these risks. Rural drivers also consistently felt that proposed safety interventions were less useful than did drivers from urban areas. It is hoped these results can be used to help instruct research efforts and inform policy decisions of the attitudes and beliefs of drivers who experience differing safety cultures

Steering Entropy Revisited

Drivers aim to maintain their vehicle within a number of individualsituated safety margins. Safety margin violations are characterized by rapid strongcorrective steering. Steering entropy was introduced to quantify drivers’ efforts tomaintain their lateral safety margins. In the original steering entropy, severalcomputational assumptions were made. The objective is to scrutinize andmotivate these choices and exemplify the effects of deviations from these choiceswith data from a driver distraction study. The new optimized algorithm is shownto yield significances where a number of classical metrics fail to find anysignificance. Its sensitivity is attributed to the fact that a number of observedchanges in steering behavior all manifest in a widened steering prediction errordistribution which the algorithm picks up sensitively with its log-based weightingof prediction error outliers and its use of a prediction filter that is maximallysensitive to the spectral characteristics of the baseline data

The Numerical Simulation in Ballistics

In this paper we examine the movement of the solid body thrown with some angle to the horizon (for example the shot mine). Such movement is described by non-linear system of equations. This system is being approximated by linear system, in segments. The experiment results have been approximated and the dependence of air resistance coeficient from mean value of velocity along the trajectory was found. From the point of view of mathematics the incorrect problem must be solved because the initial conditions of system corresponding to fixed values of solutions (the coordinates of target points) must been estimated. In the case of linear system it is possible to examine the influence of non-large increment of initial conditions to the final result. In this work the probability of destruction of some fixed target and the mean square deviation of shooting regression. On the other hand has been estimated the possibility of destruction of group target using the method of Monte-Carlo

PC Cluster Possibilities in Mathematical Modeling in Quantum Mechanical Molecular Computations

We present the PC cluster built in the Department of Applied Sciences of Lithuanian Military Academy. The structure of the cluster is described and the performance is evaluated by solving of linear algebra testing tasks and nonlinear quantum chemistry molecular electronic structure computations

Recent changes in aphid (Hemiptera, Sternorrhyncha: Aphididae) fauna of Lithuania: an effect of global warming?

Two new (Aphis oenotherae and Brachycaudus divaricatae) and one rare (Dysaphis pyri) for Lithuania aphid species of southern origin were found in great numbers in southeastern Lithuania in 2002. Global warming, seasonal migrations and changes in the aphid life cycles are considered as possible reasons for the establishment of southern-born aphid species in Lithuania. D. pyri and B. divaricatae are potential orchard pests in this country