A temperament for learning: The limbic system and myelomeningocele

This article was the winner of the triennial Casey Holter Memorial Prize awarded by the Society for Research into Hydrocephalus and Spina Bifida, 2004. ABSTRACT: This essay explores the link between the limbic/hypothalamic systems within the complex conditions of hydrocephalus and myelomeningocele. Acknowledging the neuroanatomical and neuroendocrine risks inherent in the developing brains of these individuals, we focus on the converging components of temperament, cognition, and language

Memory and selective learning in children with spina bifida-myelomeningocele and shunted hydrocephalus: A preliminary study

BACKGROUND: Selective learning is the ability to select items of relevance from among less important items. Limited evidence exists regarding the efficiency with which children with spina bifida-myelomeningocele and shunted hydrocephalus (SB/SH) are able to learn information. This report describes initial data related to components of learning and metacognitive skills in children with SB/SH. METHODS: Twenty six children with SB/SH and 26 controls (age: 7 – 16 y) with average intelligence, and monolingual English-speaking backgrounds participated in the study. Exclusion criteria for the SB/SH group were: prior history of shunt infection, history of seizure or shunt malfunction within the previous three months, prior diagnoses of attention disorders and/or clinical depression. Children were presented lists of words with equal exemplars each of two distinct semantic categories (e.g. fruits, animals), and told to make as high a score as possible by learning the words. The value of the words was designated by category membership (e.g. animals = low value; fruits = high value). The total number of words learned across three learning trials was used to determine memory span. Selective learning efficiency (SLE) was computed as the efficiency with which items of greater value were selectively learned across three trials. RESULTS: Children with SB/SH did worse than controls on memory span (P < 0.05). Although SLE was not significantly different between groups, when asked what strategy was used in the selective learning tasks, 65% of the SB/SH children said they tried to remember all words (inefficient strategy). In contrast, 85% of controls said they tried to remember the higher value words – the more efficient strategy. CONCLUSION: Success in school is often dependent on the ability to recall important facts selectively and ignore less important information. Children with SB/SH in our study had a poor memory span and were unable to monitor and report an efficient and workable metacognitive strategy required to remember a list of words. Preliminary findings may begin to explain our previous clinical and research findings wherein children with SB/SH often focus on extraneous details, but demonstrate difficulty remembering the main gist of a story/event

StreamFunnel: Facilitating Communication Between a VR Streamer and Many Spectators

The increasing adoption of Virtual Reality (VR) systems in different domains have led to a need to support interaction between many spectators and a VR user. This is common in game streaming, live performances, and webinars. Prior CSCW systems for VR environments are limited to small groups of users. In this work, we identify problems associated with interaction carried out with large groups of users. To address this, we introduce an additional user role: the co-host. They mediate communications between the VR user and many spectators. To facilitate this mediation, we present StreamFunnel, which allows the co-host to be part of the VR application's space and interact with it. The design of StreamFunnel was informed by formative interviews with six experts. StreamFunnel uses a cloud-based streaming solution to enable remote co-host and many spectators to view and interact through standard web browsers, without requiring any custom software. We present results of informal user testing which provides insights into StreamFunnel's ability to facilitate these scalable interactions. Our participants, who took the role of a co-host, found that StreamFunnel enables them to add value in presenting the VR experience to the spectators and relaying useful information from the live chat to the VR user.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure

Identification of Wireless Devices Using Timing Based Fingerprinting

In the following thesis, we propose a set of techniques that allow us to create unique signatures for devices using the 802.11 standard. To do this, we exploit some fundamental physical as well as some protocol specific properties of the devices to extract a set of features that can be converted into a usable fingerprint capable of identifying the device. As wireless networks become more and more popular, there is an increased need to ensure that only authorised users using legitimate devices are allowed access into the network. As wireless networks typically allow any user with a wireless NIC and a passphrase to gain access to the network’s resources, it makes them many magnitudes less secure than traditional wired networks. Moreover it makes it easy for attackers to perform Man in the Middle attacks using rogue Access Points or gain entry into secured networks through non authorised Access Points set up unsuspecting users. To create fingerprints we use the variations in the frequency of vibrations of the clock crystals in the devices. Due to certain physical traits in the crystal, no two crystals vibrate at exactly the same frequency, resulting in a distinctive variation in the number of oscillations in two devices over time. We use this characteristic to try and determine the rate at which the device to be fingerprinted diverges from our reference clock and use this mechanism to create unique fingerprints for devices. To gather the timing information from devices we use the beacon frames transmitted by Access points and for determining the skew of the end user devices we use TCP and ICMP based requisition protocols. We found that our techniques for Access Point detection gives us a detection rate of over 90% in a live deployment with over 10 devices and the detection rates for end user device systems were 70% and 90% respectively in their test while the detection rates were in the neighbourhood of just 60-65% in the case of the device type detections. The capture sizes needed for such accuracy levels from our tests suggest that the required accuracy can be acquired by running the captures for 200-250 seconds for access points and ICMP based techniques and slightly over 500 seconds for TCP based techniques. When our system is deployed in live networks, we believe that we can accurately detect the presence of possible intruder devices in the network from their fingerprints, allowing us to possibly detect intruders employing the use of measures such as MAC spoofing or rogue Access Point deployments. This improves the overall security of the network against such threats and expand the detection capabilities to cover hitherto undetectable or difficult to detect attacks and take preventative measures before any serious damage may take place