The Temporal Dimension of Electronic Meetings: A Study of Synchronous and Asynchronous Idea Generation

Electronic meeting systems can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of group discussions, but relatively little research has investigated use of the technology in asynchronous environments. In this study, five groups of 10 students participated in synchronous legislative sessions and five groups of 10 met in asynchronous settings. Results showed that there were no differences in meeting process satisfaction, production blocking, evaluation apprehension, and total and relevant comments generated, but synchronous groups believed there was more participation and were more satisfied with the comments. Although there could be less feeling of social presence, use of asynchronous, distributed meetings might become more prevalent as groups seek to reduce travel

Machine Translation in a Multilingual Electronic Meeting

Electronic meetings can be more efficient and effective than traditional, oral discussions, but until only recently, groups with no common language could not benefit from machine translation. Although it is possible for linguists or other staff members using machines to translate comments during a multilingual discussion, the research presented here shows that this is not feasible for large groups speaking many languages. As a solution, we propose a fully automated multilingual meeting system, and an example of its use in a meeting with Chinese, Korean, and English comments shows its potential to reduce multinational communication barriers

Evaluating the Knowledge of Conversational Agents

Several studies have tested chatbots for their abilities to emulate human conversation, but few have evaluated the systems’ general knowledge. In this study, we asked two chatbots (Mitsuku and Tutor) and a digital assistant (Cortana) several questions and compared their answers to 67 humans’ answers. Results showed that while Tutor and Cortana performed poorly, the accuracies of Mitsuku and the humans were not significantly different. As expected, the chatbots and Cortana answered factual questions more accurately than abstract questions

Application of structural equation models to construct genetic networks using differentially expressed genes and single-nucleotide polymorphisms

Understanding the genetic basis of human variation is an important goal of biomedical research. In this study, we used structural equation models (SEMs) to construct genetic networks to model how specific single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from two genes known to cause acute myeloid leukemia (AML) by somatic mutation, runt-related transcription factor 1 (RUNX1) and ets variant gene 6 (ETV6), affect expression levels of other genes and how RUNX1 and ETV6 are related to each other. The SEM approach allows us to compare several candidate models from which an explanatory genetic network can be constructed

Design Methodology of Tightly Regulated Dual-Output LLC Resonant Converter Using PFM-APWM Hybrid Control Method

A dual-output LLC resonant converter using pulse frequency modulation (PFM) and asymmetrical pulse width modulation (APWM) can achieve tight output voltage regulation, high power density, and high cost-effectiveness. However, an improper resonant tank design cannot achieve tight cross regulation of the dual-output channels at the worst-case load conditions. In addition, proper magnetizing inductance is required to achieve zero voltage switching (ZVS) of the power MOSFETs in the LLC resonant converter. In this paper, voltage gain of modulation methods and steady state operations are analyzed to implement the hybrid control method. In addition, the operation of the hybrid control algorithm is analyzed to achieve tight cross regulation performance. From this analysis, the design methodology of the resonant tank and the magnetizing inductance are proposed to compensate the output error of both outputs and to achieve ZVS over the entire load range. The cross regulation performance is verified with simulation and experimental results using a 190 W prototype converter

Dual D-Brane Actions

Dual super Dp-brane actions are constructed by carrying out a duality transformation of the world-volume U(1) gauge field. The resulting world-volume actions, which contain a (p - 2)-form gauge field, are shown to have the expected properties. Specifically, the D1-brane and D3-brane transform in ways that can be understood on the basis of the SL(2, Z) duality of type IIB superstring theory. Also, the D2-brane and the D4-brane transform in ways that are expected on the basis of the relationship between type IIA superstring theory and 11d M theory. For example, the dual D4-brane action is shown to coincide with the double-dimensional reduction of the recently constructed M5-brane action. The implications for gauge-fixed D-brane actions are discussed briefly.Comment: 18 pages, latex, no figures; references adde