Face-to-face and online collaboration: appreciating rules and adding complexity

This paper reports how 6-8 year-old children build, play and share video-games in an animated programming environment. Children program their games using rules as creative tools in the construction process. While working both face-to-face and remotely on their games, we describe how they can collaboratively come to explain phenomena arising from programmed or 'system' rules. Focusing on one illustrative case study of two children, we propose two conjectures. First, we claim that in face-to-face collaboration, the children centre their attention on narrative, and address the problem of translating the narrative into system rules which can be =programmed‘ into the computer. This allowed the children to debug any conflicts between system rules in order to maintain the flow of the game narrative. A second conjecture is that over the Internet children were encouraged to add complexity and innovative elements to their games, not by the addition of socially-constructed or 'player' rules but rather through additional system rules which elaborate the mini-formalism in which they engaged. This shift of attention to system rules occurred at the same time, and perhaps as a result of, a loosening of the game narrative that was a consequence of the remoteness of the interaction

Faculty Perspectives of Recruitment and Retention of African American Faculty in Predominantly White Institutions

Despite a growing population, the underrepresentation of African American faculty in predominantly White institutions (PWIs) is a growing concern in the United States. Recent studies indicate PWIs have been focused on increasing diverse student enrollment, particularly among African Americans, but not on recruiting and retaining African American faculty. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to obtain the perspectives of faculty members regarding recruitment and retention of African American faculty at PWIs. The goal was to identify faculty perspectives on recruitment and retention based upon their personal experiences. Conceptual frameworks for this study were Bell’s critical race theory and Tajfel’s social identity theory. Seven African American and three European American faculty who had worked at a PWI for a minimum of 2 years and who served on faculty search committees or provided advocacy for African American faculty through mentoring, coteaching or conducting coresearch participated in semistructured interviews. Data from interviews were analyzed using a seven-step process that included both NVIVO 12 Plus and hand coding. The key results from the study involved (a) distinctions of privilege, (b) European American faculty functions, (c) views of diversity, (d) search committee actions, (e) institutional barriers and (f) approaches to mentoring. Future research includes establishment of formal mentoring programs and building sustainable partnerships with Historically Black Colleges and Universities to promote faculty recruitment and retention. Social change implications include PWIs willingness to make systemic changes to institutional barriers and awareness of privilege throughout their institutions

Liquid-liquid equilibriums in aqueous solutions of demixing amines loaded with gas for CO 2 capture processes

International audienceCarbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a solid option for CO2 mitigation in the atmosphere. One option is the CO2 capture from industrial effluents followed by storage in secured sites. Capture processes are based on selective absorption/desorption cycles of gas in aqueous solutions of amines[1]. The cost of CO2 treatment with classical alkanolamines is a limitation for the use of this technology. The development of breakthrough technologies is needed to optimize the separation process. One of the considered option is the use of a new class of amine : the demixing amines. Those amines are going through a liquid-liquid separation phase when increasing the temperature[2]. This very interesting property allows to treat only a part of the absorbent solution for the regeneration of the CO2 in the absorption/desorption cycle. The use of such new system induced the perfect knowledge of the liquid-liquid equilibriums (LLE) in the binary mixtures water + amine, and the influence of the CO2 on such equilibriums. The aim of this paper is to present a method developed in the laboratory to study precisely the LLE in the binary solutions water + amines and the ternary mixtures water+amine+CO2, as a function of the pressure and the CO2 loading charge. This work is realized with the financial support of ANR and NSERC through an international collaborative project between France and Canada named DACOOTA

The Peniston & Kulkosky Treatment for Chemical Dependence: a Replication, and Assessment of the Importance of the Electroencephalograph (EEG) Biofeedback Component of the Protocol

This thesis is primarily a replication of Peniston and Kulkoskys' (1989; 1990) treatment (PKT) study which reported successful outcomes for alcoholics using an alpha/theta electroencephalograph (EEG) biofeedback protocol. The PKT protocol consists of 6 temperature biofeedback sessions of training increased hand temperature, followed by 30 sessions of training, via EEG biofeedback, increases in alpha/theta band amplitude. The latter sessions included visualizations of personality and physiology changes, and visualisations of scenes where alcohol is refused. Another aim of this study was to determine whether the EEG biofeedback element of the protocol was superior in outcomes to the subject simply listening to monotonous sounds. In addition to three months of therapeutic community treatment, one experimental group of 15 subjects received the PKT protocol, the other received a modified version excluding EEG biofeedback, and a control group of 14 subjects had no additional treatment. Post-treatment follow up revealed significant improvements for all three groups in key psychometric instruments. These were the Multiaxial Personality Inventory (MCMI-II), Situational Confidence Questionnaire (SCQ), Life Purpose Questionnaire (LPQ), and, at follow up, Addiction Severity Index (ASI). The control group changed in fewer MCMI-II scales, and had a higher treatment drop out rate. At follow up the groups' abstinence rates, using Peniston and Kulkoskys' measure, were also similar. However, when more sensitive relapse measures were applied, the PKT groups' relapse results were about twice those of the control group. This was significant for male subjects' mean number of days using substances, whereas female subjects' abstinence rates were high in all three groups. This therapeutic modality enhances therapeutic community treatment outcomes in a small sample of subjects, a result not common in the literature. It merits further investigation and implementation in a New Zealand setting

Ludwig: A parallel Lattice-Boltzmann code for complex fluids

This paper describes `Ludwig', a versatile code for the simulation of Lattice-Boltzmann (LB) models in 3-D on cubic lattices. In fact `Ludwig' is not a single code, but a set of codes that share certain common routines, such as I/O and communications. If `Ludwig' is used as intended, a variety of complex fluid models with different equilibrium free energies are simple to code, so that the user may concentrate on the physics of the problem, rather than on parallel computing issues. Thus far, `Ludwig''s main application has been to symmetric binary fluid mixtures. We first explain the philosophy and structure of `Ludwig' which is argued to be a very effective way of developing large codes for academic consortia. Next we elaborate on some parallel implementation issues such as parallel I/O, and the use of MPI to achieve full portability and good efficiency on both MPP and SMP systems. Finally, we describe how to implement generic solid boundaries, and look in detail at the particular case of a symmetric binary fluid mixture near a solid wall. We present a novel scheme for the thermodynamically consistent simulation of wetting phenomena, in the presence of static and moving solid boundaries, and check its performance.Comment: Submitted to Computer Physics Communication

Bilingualism and executive functioning in children born very low birth weight and normal birth weight

Research has documented an advantage on executive functioning in bilingual compared to monolingual children, suggesting that bilingual children may develop inhibitory control earlier than their monolingual peers. There are no known studies examining the differences between monolingual and bilingual children who were born very low birth weight (VLBW). Children born VLBW are at greater risk for difficulties with attention and inhibition. Executive functioning abilities were measured at 3-4 years and at 5-7 years. Caregivers reported sociodemographic information. Bilingualism was measured by self-report and observation of unstructured mother-child play. Executive functioning abilities were measured using the Bear Dragon (inhibition and working memory 3-4 years), Memory for Location 2 (working memory 3-4 years), Gift Delay (inhibition 3-4 & 5-7 years), WJ-III Memory for Words (working memory 3-4 & 5-7 years), Color Form (inhibition and task switching 5-7 years), and the DCCS (inhibition and task switching 5-7 years). Children born normal birth weight (NBW) performed significantly better on tasks involving working memory (3-4 years), and inhibition (5-7years). Monolingual children born NBW performed better on tasks of working memory (3-4 years) and inhibition (5-7 years) compared to bilingual children born VLBW. Modest evidence for a bilingual (parent reported but not observational) advantage on one of three inhibition tasks (Gift Delay) emerged at school age (5-7 years). Children born NBW performed better on executive functioning measures beginning at the preschool age (3-4 years). Evidence for developmental differences between these groups helps to provide a broader understanding of the development of early executive processes

Affine Subspace Representation for Feature Description

This paper proposes a novel Affine Subspace Representation (ASR) descriptor to deal with affine distortions induced by viewpoint changes. Unlike the traditional local descriptors such as SIFT, ASR inherently encodes local information of multi-view patches, making it robust to affine distortions while maintaining a high discriminative ability. To this end, PCA is used to represent affine-warped patches as PCA-patch vectors for its compactness and efficiency. Then according to the subspace assumption, which implies that the PCA-patch vectors of various affine-warped patches of the same keypoint can be represented by a low-dimensional linear subspace, the ASR descriptor is obtained by using a simple subspace-to-point mapping. Such a linear subspace representation could accurately capture the underlying information of a keypoint (local structure) under multiple views without sacrificing its distinctiveness. To accelerate the computation of ASR descriptor, a fast approximate algorithm is proposed by moving the most computational part (ie, warp patch under various affine transformations) to an offline training stage. Experimental results show that ASR is not only better than the state-of-the-art descriptors under various image transformations, but also performs well without a dedicated affine invariant detector when dealing with viewpoint changes.Comment: To Appear in the 2014 European Conference on Computer Visio

Evaluating the performance of a climate-driven mortality model during heat waves and cold spells in Europe.

The impact of climate change on human health is a serious concern. In particular, changes in the frequency and intensity of heat waves and cold spells are of high relevance in terms of mortality and morbidity. This demonstrates the urgent need for reliable early-warning systems to help authorities prepare and respond to emergency situations. In this study, we evaluate the performance of a climate-driven mortality model to provide probabilistic predictions of exceeding emergency mortality thresholds for heat wave and cold spell scenarios. Daily mortality data corresponding to 187 NUTS2 regions across 16 countries in Europe were obtained from 1998-2003. Data were aggregated to 54 larger regions in Europe, defined according to similarities in population structure and climate. Location-specific average mortality rates, at given temperature intervals over the time period, were modelled to account for the increased mortality observed during both high and low temperature extremes and differing comfort temperatures between regions. Model parameters were estimated in a Bayesian framework, in order to generate probabilistic simulations of mortality across Europe for time periods of interest. For the heat wave scenario (1-15 August 2003), the model was successfully able to anticipate the occurrence or non-occurrence of mortality rates exceeding the emergency threshold (75th percentile of the mortality distribution) for 89% of the 54 regions, given a probability decision threshold of 70%. For the cold spell scenario (1-15 January 2003), mortality events in 69% of the regions were correctly anticipated with a probability decision threshold of 70%. By using a more conservative decision threshold of 30%, this proportion increased to 87%. Overall, the model performed better for the heat wave scenario. By replacing observed temperature data in the model with forecast temperature, from state-of-the-art European forecasting systems, probabilistic mortality predictions could potentially be made several months ahead of imminent heat waves and cold spells