The gross motor skills of children with mild learning disabilities

Many international studies have examined the gross motor skills of children studying in special schools while local studies of such nature are limited. This study investigated the gross motor skills of children with Mild Learning Disabilities (MLD; n = 14, M age = 8.93 years, SD = .33) with the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (TGMD-2, Ulrich, 2000). The TGMD-2 consists of 12 items equally divided into two subtests (locomotor and object control). The locomotor subtest includes run, gallop, hop, leap, horizontal jump and slide while the object control subtest includes strike a stationary ball, stationary dribble, kick, catch, overhand throw and underhand roll. The results revealed significant differences in 8 out of 12 test items: gallop, hop, leap, horizontal jump, slide, strike, dribble and roll at mastery level between children with MLD and TGMD-2 norm population. The authors suggest motor interventions for children with MLD to improve their gross motor skills

Learning to Navigate Cloth using Haptics

We present a controller that allows an arm-like manipulator to navigate deformable cloth garments in simulation through the use of haptic information. The main challenge of such a controller is to avoid getting tangled in, tearing or punching through the deforming cloth. Our controller aggregates force information from a number of haptic-sensing spheres all along the manipulator for guidance. Based on haptic forces, each individual sphere updates its target location, and the conflicts that arise between this set of desired positions is resolved by solving an inverse kinematic problem with constraints. Reinforcement learning is used to train the controller for a single haptic-sensing sphere, where a training run is terminated (and thus penalized) when large forces are detected due to contact between the sphere and a simplified model of the cloth. In simulation, we demonstrate successful navigation of a robotic arm through a variety of garments, including an isolated sleeve, a jacket, a shirt, and shorts. Our controller out-performs two baseline controllers: one without haptics and another that was trained based on large forces between the sphere and cloth, but without early termination.Comment: Supplementary video available at https://youtu.be/iHqwZPKVd4A. Related publications http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~karenliu/Robotic_dressing.htm

Campus Elections To Be Postponed Until Year's End

Campus elections in several public universities will be postponed to the end of this year or early next year

Two-Dimensional Controlled Syntheses of Polypeptide Molecular Brushes via N-Carboxyanhydride Ring-Opening Polymerization and Ring-Opening Metathesis Polymerization.

Well-defined molecular brushes bearing polypeptides as side chains were prepared by a "grafting through" synthetic strategy with two-dimensional control over the brush molecular architectures. By integrating N-carboxyanhydride ring-opening polymerizations (NCA ROPs) and ring-opening metathesis polymerizations (ROMPs), desirable segment lengths of polypeptide side chains and polynorbornene brush backbones were independently constructed in controlled manners. The N2 flow accelerated NCA ROP was utilized to prepare polypeptide macromonomers with different lengths initiated from a norbornene-based primary amine, and those macromonomers were then polymerized via ROMP. It was found that a mixture of dichloromethane and an ionic liquid were required as the solvent system to allow for construction of molecular brush polymers having densely-grafted peptide chains emanating from a polynorbornene backbone, poly(norbornene-graft-poly(β-benzyl-l-aspartate)) (P(NB-g-PBLA)). Highly efficient postpolymerization modification was achieved by aminolysis of PBLA side chains for facile installment of functional moieties onto the molecular brushes

Applications of Proper Orthogonal Decomposition for Inviscid Transonic Aerodynamics

Two extensions to the proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) technique are considered for steady transonic aerodynamic applications. The first is to couple the POD approach with a cubic spline interpolation procedure in order to develop fast, low-order models that accurately capture the variation in parameters, such as the angle of attack or inflow Mach number. The second extension is a POD technique for the reconstruction of incomplete or inaccurate aerodynamic data. First, missing flow field data is constructed with an existing POD basis constructed from complete aerodynamic data. Second, a technique is used to develop a complete snapshots from an incomplete set of aerodynamic snapshots.Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA

Mobile versus PC: Does Device Type Affect Online Survey Response Quality for Tourism Research?

The use of mobile devices to complete online surveys is trending upward and is likely to continue unabated for some time. With this growth, there is a growing interest in how to make mobile devices a viable way to administer self-report online surveys among researchers. Utilizing a large-scale online panel survey, the current study compares the quality and pattern of responses collected from mobile device respondents to those collected from PC/laptop respondents. It is found that although mobile respondents tended to provide shorter answers to open-ended questions than PC/laptop respondents, response quality was not significantly different between the two groups. Additionally, compared to PC/laptop respondents, mobile device respondents were younger, more likely to be female and with a higher income level. Practical implications related to our research findings are also discussed