User-centric cognitive assessment. Evaluation of attention in special working centres : from paper to Kinect

PROLOG project aims to provide a complementary ICT tool for the assessment of cognitive skills of mentally disabled working people. The project is developed by Centre d'Accessibilitat i Intel·ligència Ambiental de Catalunya (CAiAC), Indra, Fundación Adecco and PRODIS, and is part of Cátedra INDRA de Tecnologías Accesibles. The project provides a platform to evaluate, in a quick and personalized way, the attentional performance of users through specific tasks grounded in existing psychological tests. Interaction with the tests is done by Kinect technology. Also a platform execution logs users in different tests over time in order to detect possible cognitive impairments. The platform records the worker's performance on various tasks and presents the evolution over time in order to detect possible cognitive impairment. This paper details the first phase of the project corresponding to the design of the tests

Aperture Synthesis CO(J=1-0) Observations and Near-Infrared Photometry of the Non-Barred Seyfert Galaxy NGC 5033

Aperture synthesis observations of CO(J=1-0) emission and near-infrared broad-band photometry of the non-barred Seyfert galaxy NGC 5033 (D = 18.7 Mpc) were performed. Our 3".9 x 3".6 resolution CO observations reveal a perturbed distribution and the kinematics of molecular gas in the center of NGC 5033; we find the characteristic gaseous features that are widely observed in barred spiral galaxies, such as two bright CO peaks near the center (separated by ~ 3'' or 270 pc from the nucleus), two offset ridges of CO emission emanating from the CO peaks, and a CO ring (with a radius of ~ 14'' or 1.3 kpc). Double-peaked velocity profiles are also evident near the two CO peaks, implying that these CO peaks are orbit crowding zones in a barred/oval potential. Although NIR data only give an upper limit of the possible bar lengths, due to a large inclination of the NGC 5033 disk (i = 68 deg), our CO data clearly suggests the presence of a small (the semi-major axis of about 12'' - 15'' or 1.1 - 1.4 kpc) nuclear bar (or oval structure) in the center of the ``non-barred'' galaxy NGC 5033. Our results demonstrate that high-resolution CO imaging-spectroscopy is useful to search for nuclear bars, even in highly inclined systems where isophoto fitting techniques are not applicable. We find that the gas mass-to-dynamical mass ratio, M_gas/M_dyn, is small (< 1%) within a radius of 2'' or 180 pc, in contrast to starburst nuclei. This implies that the starburst does not cohabitate in the type-1.5 Seyfert nucleus of N GC 5033.Comment: 23 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in PASJ. For high resolution figures see http://www.nro.nao.ac.jp/~f0151kk/n5033

Recovering from destruction: the conservation, reintegration and perceptual analysis of a flood-damaged painting by John Martin

This paper describes treatment issues surrounding John Martin’s epic Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum (1821). The painting experienced such extensive structural damage following the 1928 Thames flood that it was considered destroyed. Despite major water damage affecting all layers of the painting and the loss of approximately one-fifth of the canvas, recent examination revealed the work to be in restorable condition. However, the extreme nature of the damages necessitates special ethical and technical considerations with regard to treatment, especially for the reintegration of the large missing portion. A consideration of viewer perception of the digitally simulated options for reintegration and their influence on viewer gaze behaviour, monitored via novel eye-tracking methods, was used to inform the treatment process

El bienestar psicológico de los preadolescentes

El estudio del bienestar psicológico, como componente de la calidad de vida, ha sido un campo de notables desarrollos durante las dos últimas décadas. No obstante, existen todavía pocos instrumentos aplicables al estudio de dicho bienestar en la adolescencia. En este articulo se presentan los resultados de la aplicación de uno de dichos instrumentos ya adaptado a la población infantil española (Alsinet, 1998), la escala SLSS de Huebner (l99la, 1994), a una muestra de 1.590 adolescentes catalanes entre 12 y 14 años. Los resultados se contrastan con los obtenidos al administrar escalas de afecto positivo y afecto negativo a la misma muestra y con los originalmente obtenidos por Huebner con una muestra norteamericana. Dichos resultados nzuestran una buena validez interna, una estructura factorial consistente, un buen funcionamiento de la escala con la población española y unas pautas de respuesta coherentes con las originalmente obtenidas por Huebner con muestras norteamericanas