Words from the wizarding world: fictional words, context and domain knowledge

The influence of domain knowledge on reading behavior has received limited investigation compared to the influence of, for example, context and/or word frequency. The current study tested participants with and without domain knowledge of the Harry Potter (HP) universe. Fans and non-fans read sentences containing HP, high-frequency (HF), or low-frequency target-words. Targets were presented in contexts that were supportive or unsupportive within a 2 (group: fans, non-fans) × 3 (context: HP, HF, LF) × 3 (word type: HP, HF, LF) mixed design. Thirty-two fans and 22 non-fans read 72 two-sentence experimental items while eye-movement behavior was recorded: Initial sentences established context; second sentences contained target-words. Fans processed HP words faster than non-fans. No group difference was observed on HF or LF processing durations, suggesting equivalent reading capabilities. In HP contexts, HP and LF targets were processed equivalently. Processing of HF and LF words was facilitated by their supportive context as expected. Non-fans made more regressions into the target region in HP contexts and regressed more into HP targets than other targets; fans regressed into target word regions equivalently across all context and word types. Results suggest that domain knowledge influences early but not immediate lexical access, while the processing effect of novelty was seen in regressive eye movements. These results are more supportive of modular accounts of linguistic processing and serial models of eye movement control. Words without grounding in reality, or true embodiment, were integrated into fans’ mental lexicons

Testing Modeling Assumptions in the West Africa Ebola Outbreak

The Ebola virus in West Africa has infected almost 30,000 and killed over 11,000 people. Recent models of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) have often made assumptions about how the disease spreads, such as uniform transmissibility and homogeneous mixing within a population. In this paper, we test whether these assumptions are necessarily correct, and offer simple solutions that may improve disease model accuracy. First, we use data and models of West African migration to show that EVD does not homogeneously mix, but spreads in a predictable manner. Next, we estimate the initial growth rate of EVD within country administrative divisions and find that it significantly decreases with population density. Finally, we test whether EVD strains have uniform transmissibility through a novel statistical test, and find that certain strains appear more often than expected by chance.Comment: 16 pages, 14 figure

Design of Fire Alarm with Dual Color Strobes and Speaker

As buildings become larger and more crowded, evacuation becomes more difficult to manage. Fire alarms that provide voice instructions can decrease confusion during a fire or other emergency. However, these alarms must also be capable of providing the hearing impaired with the same information. A fire alarm was designed which incorporates a speaker which can provide detailed response instructions and two different-colored strobe lights to notify the hearing impaired of either a fire requiring full evacuation or a general emergency

A Geometric B-Spline Over the Triangular Domain

For modelling curves, B-splines [3] are among the most versatile control schemes. However, scaling this technique to surface patches has proven to be a non-trivial endeavor. While a suitable scheme exists for rectangular patches in the form of tensor product B-splines, techniques involving the triangular domain are much less spectacular. The current cutting edge in triangular B-splines [2] is the DMS-spline. While the resulting surfaces possess high degrees of continuity, the control scheme is awkward and the evaluation is computationally expensive. A more fundamental problem is the construction bears little resemblance to the construction used for the B-Spline. This deficiency leads to the central idea of the thesis; what happens if the simple blending functions found at the heart of the B-Spline construction are used over higher dimension domains? In this thesis I develop a geometric generalization of B-Spline curves over the triangular domain. This construction mimics the control point blending that occurs with uniform B-Splines. The construction preserves the simple control scheme and evaluation of B-Splines, without the immense computational requirements of DMS-splines. The result is a new patch control scheme, the G-Patch, possessing C0 continuity between adjacent patches

Challenges regarding the internationalisation of universities from Scotland, within the Brexit landscape

The international labour market of 2018 can be characterized as very competition driven and for anyone who aspires at a professional evolution, international knowledge and skills have become required and indispensable for success. Universities emerged as the essential centre of the internationalisation strategies of governments in many countries of the world because they represent key providers of the afore-mentioned knowledge and skills. The process of internationalisation of higher education clearly has certain advantages for the students and academic staff of the undergraduate and graduate schools, but also for the national economy, and the international community. Yet in each country there is a different degree of importance given to each of these multiple benefits. The objectives of this research had two principal focuses: 1) to identify the benefits of the internationalisation process of higher education in Scotland and 2) to investigate which measures are most effective for accomplishing these benefits given the background of an uncertain climate influenced by Brexit. A questionnaire was used to obtain the views of representatives of all 19 Scottish universities of Scotland, as to the current situation in their country. The results reveal the range of approaches taken by these universities when advocating the process of establishing an international basis to higher education, but, also in their respective internationalisation strategies. Securing the respondents was possible within the Erasmus+ project developed in 2017, titled “University Study Visit: Youth and Community Work in Scotland”. During this project academics and experts were consulted regarding their views on ways to improve the cooperation between Scottish universities and those of the European Union having as a background an economic, social and political context permeated with Brexit concerns. Their suggestions were included in the study as recommendations for strengthening the ties between the EU and Scottish universitie

Dynamic Analysis of Executables to Detect and Characterize Malware

It is needed to ensure the integrity of systems that process sensitive information and control many aspects of everyday life. We examine the use of machine learning algorithms to detect malware using the system calls generated by executables-alleviating attempts at obfuscation as the behavior is monitored rather than the bytes of an executable. We examine several machine learning techniques for detecting malware including random forests, deep learning techniques, and liquid state machines. The experiments examine the effects of concept drift on each algorithm to understand how well the algorithms generalize to novel malware samples by testing them on data that was collected after the training data. The results suggest that each of the examined machine learning algorithms is a viable solution to detect malware-achieving between 90% and 95% class-averaged accuracy (CAA). In real-world scenarios, the performance evaluation on an operational network may not match the performance achieved in training. Namely, the CAA may be about the same, but the values for precision and recall over the malware can change significantly. We structure experiments to highlight these caveats and offer insights into expected performance in operational environments. In addition, we use the induced models to gain a better understanding about what differentiates the malware samples from the goodware, which can further be used as a forensics tool to understand what the malware (or goodware) was doing to provide directions for investigation and remediation.Comment: 9 pages, 6 Tables, 4 Figure