Load concentration due to missing members in planar faces of a large space truss

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Waltz, J. E.

1979-01-01

A large space structure with members missing was investigated using a finite element analysis. The particular structural configuration was the tetrahedral truss, with attention restricted to one of its planar faces. Initially the finite element model of a complete face was verified by comparing it with known results for some basic loadings. Then an analysis was made of the structure with members near the center removed. Some calculations were made on the influence of the mesh size of a structure containing a hexagonal hole, and an analysis was also made of a structure with a rigid hexagonal insert. In general, load concentration effects in these trusses were significantly lower than classical stress concentration effects in an infinitely wide isotropic plate with a circular rigid inclusion, although larger effects were obtained when a hole extended over several rings of elements.

GeoCENS: a geospatial cyberinfrastructure for the world-wide sensor web.

PubMed

Liang, Steve H L; Huang, Chih-Yuan

2013-10-02

The world-wide sensor web has become a very useful technique for monitoring the physical world at spatial and temporal scales that were previously impossible. Yet we believe that the full potential of sensor web has thus far not been revealed. In order to harvest the world-wide sensor web's full potential, a geospatial cyberinfrastructure is needed to store, process, and deliver large amount of sensor data collected worldwide. In this paper, we first define the issue of the sensor web long tail followed by our view of the world-wide sensor web architecture. Then, we introduce the Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure for Environmental Sensing (GeoCENS) architecture and explain each of its components. Finally, with demonstration of three real-world powered-by-GeoCENS sensor web applications, we believe that the GeoCENS architecture can successfully address the sensor web long tail issue and consequently realize the world-wide sensor web vision.

Use of World Wide Web and NCSA Mcsaic at Langley

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nelson, Michael

1994-01-01

A brief history of the use of the World Wide Web at Langley Research Center is presented along with architecture of the Langley Web. Benefits derived from the Web and some Langley projects that have employed the World Wide Web are discussed.

Internet, World Wide Web, and Creativity.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Siau, Keng

1999-01-01

This article presents the services available on the Internet for creativity and discusses their applicability to electronic brainstorming. Services include bulletin boards, electronic mail and listservs, chat groups, file transfers, and remote login. Opportunities provided by the World Wide Web are discussed, along with tools available to…

GeoCENS: A Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure for the World-Wide Sensor Web

PubMed Central

Liang, Steve H.L.; Huang, Chih-Yuan

2013-01-01

The world-wide sensor web has become a very useful technique for monitoring the physical world at spatial and temporal scales that were previously impossible. Yet we believe that the full potential of sensor web has thus far not been revealed. In order to harvest the world-wide sensor web's full potential, a geospatial cyberinfrastructure is needed to store, process, and deliver large amount of sensor data collected worldwide. In this paper, we first define the issue of the sensor web long tail followed by our view of the world-wide sensor web architecture. Then, we introduce the Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure for Environmental Sensing (GeoCENS) architecture and explain each of its components. Finally, with demonstration of three real-world powered-by-GeoCENS sensor web applications, we believe that the GeoCENS architecture can successfully address the sensor web long tail issue and consequently realize the world-wide sensor web vision. PMID:24152921

Re-Framing the World Wide Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Black, August

2011-01-01

The research presented in this dissertation studies and describes how technical standards, protocols, and application programming interfaces (APIs) shape the aesthetic, functional, and affective nature of our most dominant mode of online communication, the World Wide Web (WWW). I examine the politically charged and contentious battle over browser…

Marketing on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Teague, John H.

1995-01-01

Discusses the World Wide Web, its importance for marketing, its advantages, non-commercial promotions on the Web, how businesses use the Web, the Web market, resistance to Internet commercialization, getting on the Web, creating Web pages, rising above the noise, and some of the Web's problems and limitations. (SR)

WorldWide Web: Hypertext from CERN.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nickerson, Gord

1992-01-01

Discussion of software tools for accessing information on the Internet focuses on the WorldWideWeb (WWW) system, which was developed at the European Particle Physics Laboratory (CERN) in Switzerland to build a worldwide network of hypertext links using available networking technology. Its potential for use with multimedia documents is also…

Accessing NASA Technology with the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nelson, Michael L.; Bianco, David J.

1995-01-01

NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) began using the World Wide Web (WWW) in the summer of 1993, becoming the first NASA installation to provide a Center-wide home page. This coincided with a reorganization of LaRC to provide a more concentrated focus on technology transfer to both aerospace and non-aerospace industry. Use of WWW and NCSA Mosaic not only provides automated information dissemination, but also allows for the implementation, evolution and integration of many technology transfer and technology awareness applications. This paper describes several of these innovative applications, including the on-line presentation of the entire Technology OPportunities Showcase (TOPS), an industrial partnering showcase that exists on the Web long after the actual 3-day event ended. The NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS) provides uniform access to many logically similar, yet physically distributed NASA report servers. WWW is also the foundation of the Langley Software Server (LSS), an experimental software distribution system which will distribute LaRC-developed software. In addition to the more formal technology distribution projects, WWW has been successful in connecting people with technologies and people with other people.

International organizations to enable world-wide mobile satellite services

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Anglin, Richard L., Jr.

1993-01-01

Numbers of systems exist or have been proposed to provide world-wide mobile satellite services (MSS). Developers of these systems have formulated institutional structures they consider most appropriate for profitable delivery of these services. MSS systems provide niche services and complement traditional telecommunications networks; they are not integrated into world-wide networks. To be successful, MSS system operators must be able to provide an integrated suite of services to support the increasing globalization, interconnectivity, and mobility of business. The critical issue to enabling 'universal roaming' is securing authority to provide MSS in all of the nations of the world. Such authority must be secured in the context of evolving trends in international telecommunications, and must specifically address issues of standardization, regulation and organization. Today, only one existing organization has such world-wide authority. The question is how proponents of new MSS systems and services can gain similar authority. Securing the appropriate authorizations requires that these new organizations reflect the objectives of the nations in which services are to be delivered.

A Semiotic Analysis of Icons on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ma, Yan

The World Wide Web allows users to interact with a graphic interface to search information in a hypermedia and multimedia environment. Graphics serve as reference points on the World Wide Web for searching and retrieving information. This study analyzed the culturally constructed syntax patterns, or codes, embedded in the icons of library…

A chemical status predictor. A methodology based on World-Wide sediment samples.

PubMed

Gredilla, A; Fdez-Ortiz de Vallejuelo, S; de Diego, A; Arana, G; Stoichev, T; Amigo, J M; Wasserman, J C; Botello, A V; Sarkar, S K; Schäfer, J; Moreno, C; Guardia, M de la; Madariaga, J M

2015-09-15

As a consequence of the limited resources of underdeveloped countries and the limited interest of the developed ones, the assessment of the chemical quality of entire water bodies around the world is a utopia in the near future. The methodology described here may serve as a first approach for the fast identification of water bodies that do not meet the good chemical status demanded by the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). It also allows estimating the natural background (or reference values of concentration) of the areas under study using a simple criterion. The starting point is the calculation the World-Wide Natural Background Levels (WWNBLs) and World-Wide Threshold Values (WWTVs), two indexes that depend on the concentration of seven elements present in sediments. These elements, As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Ni, Pb and Zn, have been selected taking into account the recommendations of the UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) and USEPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency), that describe them as elements of concern with respect to environmental toxicity. The methodology has been exemplified in a case study that includes 134 sediment samples collected in 11 transitional water bodies from 7 different countries and 4 different continents. Six of the water bodies considered met the good chemical status demanded by the WFD. The rest of them exceeded the reference WWTVs, at least for one of the elements. The estuaries of the Nerbioi-Ibaizabal (Basque Country) and Cavado (Portugal), the sea inlet of Río San Pedro (Spain), the Sepetiba Bay (Brazil) and the Yucateco lagoon (Mexico) belong to that group. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Using WorldWide Telescope in Observing, Research and Presentation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Roberts, Douglas A.; Fay, J.

2014-01-01

WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is free software that enables researchers to interactively explore observational data using a user-friendly interface. Reference, all-sky datasets and pointed observations are available as layers along with the ability to easily overlay additional FITS images and catalog data. Connections to the Astrophysics Data System (ADS) are included which enable visual investigation using WWT to drive document searches in ADS. WWT can be used to capture and share visual exploration with colleagues during observational planning and analysis. Finally, researchers can use WorldWide Telescope to create videos for professional, education and outreach presentations. I will conclude with an example of how I have used WWT in a research project. Specifically, I will discuss how WorldWide Telescope helped our group to prepare for radio observations and following them, in the analysis of multi-wavelength data taken in the inner parsec of the Galaxy. A concluding video will show how WWT brought together disparate datasets in a unified interactive visualization environment.

Emmanuel Levinas & Paulo Freire: The Ethics of Responsibility for the Face-to-Face Interaction in the Virtual World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gomez, Margarita Victoria

2009-01-01

The objective of this work is a reflection on the ethics of education on the net as a contribution to the face-to-face interaction in the virtual world. We think the ethics is a result of a process of responsible interchange with others. Two important thinkers of the last few decades, Emmanuel Levinas e Paulo Freire contribute each one with one's…

Collecting behavioural data using the world wide web: considerations for researchers

PubMed Central

Rhodes, S; Bowie, D; Hergenrather, K

2003-01-01

Objective: To identify and describe advantages, challenges, and ethical considerations of web based behavioural data collection. Methods: This discussion is based on the authors' experiences in survey development and study design, respondent recruitment, and internet research, and on the experiences of others as found in the literature. Results: The advantages of using the world wide web to collect behavioural data include rapid access to numerous potential respondents and previously hidden populations, respondent openness and full participation, opportunities for student research, and reduced research costs. Challenges identified include issues related to sampling and sample representativeness, competition for the attention of respondents, and potential limitations resulting from the much cited "digital divide", literacy, and disability. Ethical considerations include anonymity and privacy, providing and substantiating informed consent, and potential risks of malfeasance. Conclusions: Computer mediated communications, including electronic mail, the world wide web, and interactive programs will play an ever increasing part in the future of behavioural science research. Justifiable concerns regarding the use of the world wide web in research exist, but as access to, and use of, the internet becomes more widely and representatively distributed globally, the world wide web will become more applicable. In fact, the world wide web may be the only research tool able to reach some previously hidden population subgroups. Furthermore, many of the criticisms of online data collection are common to other survey research methodologies. PMID:12490652

Collecting behavioural data using the world wide web: considerations for researchers.

PubMed

Rhodes, S D; Bowie, D A; Hergenrather, K C

2003-01-01

To identify and describe advantages, challenges, and ethical considerations of web based behavioural data collection. This discussion is based on the authors' experiences in survey development and study design, respondent recruitment, and internet research, and on the experiences of others as found in the literature. The advantages of using the world wide web to collect behavioural data include rapid access to numerous potential respondents and previously hidden populations, respondent openness and full participation, opportunities for student research, and reduced research costs. Challenges identified include issues related to sampling and sample representativeness, competition for the attention of respondents, and potential limitations resulting from the much cited "digital divide", literacy, and disability. Ethical considerations include anonymity and privacy, providing and substantiating informed consent, and potential risks of malfeasance. Computer mediated communications, including electronic mail, the world wide web, and interactive programs will play an ever increasing part in the future of behavioural science research. Justifiable concerns regarding the use of the world wide web in research exist, but as access to, and use of, the internet becomes more widely and representatively distributed globally, the world wide web will become more applicable. In fact, the world wide web may be the only research tool able to reach some previously hidden population subgroups. Furthermore, many of the criticisms of online data collection are common to other survey research methodologies.

Library Services through the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xiao, Daniel; Mosley, Pixey Anne; Cornish, Alan

1997-01-01

Provides an overview of the services offered by Texas A&M University's Sterling C. Evans Library via the World Wide Web. Included are public relations, instruction, searching capabilities, enhanced communications, and exhibit options. Future applications of the Web in academic libraries are also addressed. (AEF)

News Resources on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Notess, Greg R.

1996-01-01

Describes up-to-date news sources that are presently available on the Internet and World Wide Web. Highlights include electronic newspapers; AP (Associated Press) sources and Reuters; sports news; stock market information; New York Times; multimedia capabilities, including CNN Interactive; and local and regional news. (LRW)

The wide window of face detection.

PubMed

Hershler, Orit; Golan, Tal; Bentin, Shlomo; Hochstein, Shaul

2010-08-20

Faces are detected more rapidly than other objects in visual scenes and search arrays, but the cause for this face advantage has been contested. In the present study, we found that under conditions of spatial uncertainty, faces were easier to detect than control targets (dog faces, clocks and cars) even in the absence of surrounding stimuli, making an explanation based only on low-level differences unlikely. This advantage improved with eccentricity in the visual field, enabling face detection in wider visual windows, and pointing to selective sparing of face detection at greater eccentricities. This face advantage might be due to perceptual factors favoring face detection. In addition, the relative face advantage is greater under flanked than non-flanked conditions, suggesting an additional, possibly attention-related benefit enabling face detection in groups of distracters.

Search Engines on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walster, Dian

1997-01-01

Discusses search engines and provides methods for determining what resources are searched, the quality of the information, and the algorithms used that will improve the use of search engines on the World Wide Web, online public access catalogs, and electronic encyclopedias. Lists strategies for conducting searches and for learning about the latest…

Enhanced photosynthetic efficiency in trees world-wide by rising atmospheric CO2 levels

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ehlers, Ina; Wieloch, Thomas; Groenendijk, Peter; Vlam, Mart; van der Sleen, Peter; Zuidema, Pieter A.; Robertson, Iain; Schleucher, Jürgen

2014-05-01

The atmospheric CO2 concentration is increasing rapidly due to anthropogenic emissions but the effect on the Earth's biosphere is poorly understood. The ability of the biosphere to fix CO2 through photosynthesis will determine future atmospheric CO2 concentrations as well as future productivity of crops and forests. Manipulative CO2 enrichment experiments (e.g. FACE) are limited to (i) short time spans, (ii) few locations and (iii) large step increases in [CO2]. Here, we apply new stable isotope methodology to tree-ring archives, to study the effect of increasing CO2 concentrations retrospectively during the past centuries. We cover the whole [CO2] increase since industrialization, and sample trees with global distribution. Instead of isotope ratios of whole molecules, we use intramolecular isotope distributions, a new tool for tree-ring analysis with decisive advantages. In experiments on annual plants, we have found that the intramolecular distribution of deuterium (equivalent to ratios of isotopomer abundances) in photosynthetic glucose depends on growth [CO2] and reflects the metabolic flux ratio of photosynthesis to photorespiration. By applying this isotopomer methodology to trees from Oak Ridge FACE experiment, we show that this CO2 response is present in trees on the leaf level. This CO2 dependence constitutes a physiological signal, which is transferred to the wood of the tree rings. In trees from 13 locations on all continents the isotopomer ratio of tree-ring cellulose is correlated to atmospheric [CO2] during the past 200 years. The shift of the isotopomer ratio is universal for all 12 species analyzed, including both broad-leafed trees and conifers. Because the trees originate from sites with widely differing D/H ratios of precipitation, the generality of the response demonstrates that the signal is independent of the source isotope ratio, because it is encoded in an isotopomer abundance ratio. This decoupling of climate signals and physiological

World Wide Web Server Standards and Guidelines.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stubbs, Keith M.

This document defines the specific standards and general guidelines which the U.S. Department of Education (ED) will use to make information available on the World Wide Web (WWW). The purpose of providing such guidance is to ensure high quality and consistent content, organization, and presentation of information on ED WWW servers, in order to…

World-Wide Web: Adding Multimedia to Cyberspace.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Descy, Don E.

1994-01-01

Describes the World-Wide Web (WWW), a network information resource based on hypertext. How to access WWW browsers through remote login (telnet) or though free browser software, such as Mosaic, is provided. Eight information sources that can be accessed through the WWW are listed. The address of a listserv reporting on Internet developments is…

Personal travel assistants and the world wide web

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1997-01-01

To be successful, handheld computers known as Personal Travel Assistants (PTAs) must be connected to external information sources. The viability of using the Internet and the world wide web (www) as such sources is explored. Considerations include wh...

Extracting knowledge from the World Wide Web

PubMed Central

Henzinger, Monika; Lawrence, Steve

2004-01-01

The World Wide Web provides a unprecedented opportunity to automatically analyze a large sample of interests and activity in the world. We discuss methods for extracting knowledge from the web by randomly sampling and analyzing hosts and pages, and by analyzing the link structure of the web and how links accumulate over time. A variety of interesting and valuable information can be extracted, such as the distribution of web pages over domains, the distribution of interest in different areas, communities related to different topics, the nature of competition in different categories of sites, and the degree of communication between different communities or countries. PMID:14745041

Technical Services and the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scheschy, Virginia M.

The World Wide Web and browsers such as Netscape and Mosaic have simplified access to electronic resources. Today, technical services librarians can share in the wealth of information available on the Web. One of the premier Web sites for acquisitions librarians is AcqWeb, a cousin of the AcqNet listserv. In addition to interesting news items,…

WorldWideScience.org: the global science gateway.

PubMed

Fitzpatrick, Roberta Bronson

2009-10-01

WorldWideScience.org is a Web-based global gateway connecting users to both national and international scientific databases and portals. This column will provide background information on the resource as well as introduce basic searching practices for users.

Introduction to the World Wide Web and Mosaic

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Youngblood, Jim

1994-01-01

This tutorial provides an introduction to some of the terminology related to the use of the World Wide Web and Mosaic. It is assumed that the user has some prior computer experience. References are included to other sources of additional information.

Original and Mirror Face Images and Minimum Squared Error Classification for Visible Light Face Recognition.

PubMed

Wang, Rong

2015-01-01

In real-world applications, the image of faces varies with illumination, facial expression, and poses. It seems that more training samples are able to reveal possible images of the faces. Though minimum squared error classification (MSEC) is a widely used method, its applications on face recognition usually suffer from the problem of a limited number of training samples. In this paper, we improve MSEC by using the mirror faces as virtual training samples. We obtained the mirror faces generated from original training samples and put these two kinds of samples into a new set. The face recognition experiments show that our method does obtain high accuracy performance in classification.

Searching the world wide Web

PubMed

Lawrence; Giles

1998-04-03

The coverage and recency of the major World Wide Web search engines was analyzed, yielding some surprising results. The coverage of any one engine is significantly limited: No single engine indexes more than about one-third of the "indexable Web," the coverage of the six engines investigated varies by an order of magnitude, and combining the results of the six engines yields about 3.5 times as many documents on average as compared with the results from only one engine. Analysis of the overlap between pairs of engines gives an estimated lower bound on the size of the indexable Web of 320 million pages.

The World Wide Web Virtual Library of Museums.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bowen, Jonathan P.

1995-01-01

Provides an introduction to and overview of the World Wide Web Virtual Library of Museums, an interactive directory of online museums, including organization of the hyperlinks visitor statistics, possible future direction, and information on some of the sites linked to the library. (JKP)

Studying Acute Coronary Syndrome Through the World Wide Web: Experiences and Lessons.

PubMed

Alonzo, Angelo A

2017-10-13

This study details my viewpoint on the experiences, lessons, and assessments of conducting a national study on care-seeking behavior for heart attack in the United States utilizing the World Wide Web. The Yale Heart Study (YHS) was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Grounded on two prior studies, the YHS combined a Web-based interview survey instrument; ads placed on the Internet; flyers and posters in public libraries, senior centers, and rehabilitation centers; information on chat rooms; a viral marketing strategy; and print ads to attract potential participants to share their heart attack experiences. Along the way, the grant was transferred from Ohio State University (OSU) to Yale University, and significant administrative, information technology, and personnel challenges ensued that materially delayed the study's execution. Overall, the use of the Internet to collect data on care-seeking behavior is very time consuming and emergent. The cost of using the Web was approximately 31% less expensive than that of face-to-face interviews. However, the quality of the data may have suffered because of the absence of some data compared with interviewing participants. Yet the representativeness of the 1154 usable surveys appears good, with the exception of a dearth of African American participants. ©Angelo A Alonzo. Originally published in JMIR Research Protocols (http://www.researchprotocols.org), 13.10.2017.

Studying Acute Coronary Syndrome Through the World Wide Web: Experiences and Lessons

PubMed Central

2017-01-01

This study details my viewpoint on the experiences, lessons, and assessments of conducting a national study on care-seeking behavior for heart attack in the United States utilizing the World Wide Web. The Yale Heart Study (YHS) was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Grounded on two prior studies, the YHS combined a Web-based interview survey instrument; ads placed on the Internet; flyers and posters in public libraries, senior centers, and rehabilitation centers; information on chat rooms; a viral marketing strategy; and print ads to attract potential participants to share their heart attack experiences. Along the way, the grant was transferred from Ohio State University (OSU) to Yale University, and significant administrative, information technology, and personnel challenges ensued that materially delayed the study’s execution. Overall, the use of the Internet to collect data on care-seeking behavior is very time consuming and emergent. The cost of using the Web was approximately 31% less expensive than that of face-to-face interviews. However, the quality of the data may have suffered because of the absence of some data compared with interviewing participants. Yet the representativeness of the 1154 usable surveys appears good, with the exception of a dearth of African American participants. PMID:29030328

World Wide Web Page Design: A Structured Approach.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gregory, Gwen; Brown, M. Marlo

1997-01-01

Describes how to develop a World Wide Web site based on structured programming concepts. Highlights include flowcharting, first page design, evaluation, page titles, documenting source code, text, graphics, and browsers. Includes a template for HTML writers, tips for using graphics, a sample homepage, guidelines for authoring structured HTML, and…

Contemporary Approaches to Critical Thinking and the World Wide Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Buffington, Melanie L.

2007-01-01

Teaching critical thinking skills is often endorsed as a means to help students develop their abilities to navigate the complex world in which people live and, in addition, as a way to help students succeed in school. Over the past few years, this author explored the idea of teaching critical thinking using the World Wide Web (WWW). She began…

Using the World Wide Web: Applications for Marketing Educators.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stull, William A.; And Others

1996-01-01

This article introduces potential uses of the World Wide Web for marketing education, presents tips for navigating the web, and provides a sample of useful applications. Also provides suggestions for monitoring student use of the web. (JOW)

Challenges and Pitfalls Facing International Education in a Post-International World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tate, Nicholas

2012-01-01

Taking as its starting point that the adjective international is an inadequate, but unavoidable, label to describe the content of a contemporary international education, this article sets out to explore some of the issues facing international education in a post-international world. It draws mainly on writings in French as a deliberate…

The World Wide Web and the Television Generation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maddux, Cleborne D.

1996-01-01

The hypermedia nature of the World Wide Web may represent a true paradigm shift in telecommunications, but barriers exist to the Web having similar impact on education. Some of today's college students compare the Web with "bad TV"--lengthy pauses, links that result in error messages, and animation and sound clips that are too brief.…

Embedded Web Technology: Applying World Wide Web Standards to Embedded Systems

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Ponyik, Joseph G.; York, David W.

2002-01-01

Embedded Systems have traditionally been developed in a highly customized manner. The user interface hardware and software along with the interface to the embedded system are typically unique to the system for which they are built, resulting in extra cost to the system in terms of development time and maintenance effort. World Wide Web standards have been developed in the passed ten years with the goal of allowing servers and clients to intemperate seamlessly. The client and server systems can consist of differing hardware and software platforms but the World Wide Web standards allow them to interface without knowing about the details of system at the other end of the interface. Embedded Web Technology is the merging of Embedded Systems with the World Wide Web. Embedded Web Technology decreases the cost of developing and maintaining the user interface by allowing the user to interface to the embedded system through a web browser running on a standard personal computer. Embedded Web Technology can also be used to simplify an Embedded System's internal network.

Beyond Piñatas, Fortune Cookies, and Wooden Shoes: Using the World Wide Web to Help Children Explore the Whole Wide World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kirkwood, Donna; Shulsky, Debra; Willis, Jana

2014-01-01

The advent of technology and access to the internet through the World Wide Web have stretched the traditional ways of teaching social studies beyond classroom boundaries. This article explores how teachers can create authentic and contextualized cultural studies experiences for young children by integrating social studies and technology. To…

Hierarchical Spatio-Temporal Probabilistic Graphical Model with Multiple Feature Fusion for Binary Facial Attribute Classification in Real-World Face Videos.

PubMed

Demirkus, Meltem; Precup, Doina; Clark, James J; Arbel, Tal

2016-06-01

Recent literature shows that facial attributes, i.e., contextual facial information, can be beneficial for improving the performance of real-world applications, such as face verification, face recognition, and image search. Examples of face attributes include gender, skin color, facial hair, etc. How to robustly obtain these facial attributes (traits) is still an open problem, especially in the presence of the challenges of real-world environments: non-uniform illumination conditions, arbitrary occlusions, motion blur and background clutter. What makes this problem even more difficult is the enormous variability presented by the same subject, due to arbitrary face scales, head poses, and facial expressions. In this paper, we focus on the problem of facial trait classification in real-world face videos. We have developed a fully automatic hierarchical and probabilistic framework that models the collective set of frame class distributions and feature spatial information over a video sequence. The experiments are conducted on a large real-world face video database that we have collected, labelled and made publicly available. The proposed method is flexible enough to be applied to any facial classification problem. Experiments on a large, real-world video database McGillFaces [1] of 18,000 video frames reveal that the proposed framework outperforms alternative approaches, by up to 16.96 and 10.13%, for the facial attributes of gender and facial hair, respectively.

Time Series Data Visualization in World Wide Telescope

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fay, J.

WorldWide Telescope provides a rich set of timer series visualization for both archival and real time data. WWT consists of both interactive desktop tools for interactive immersive visualization and HTML5 web based controls that can be utilized in customized web pages. WWT supports a range of display options including full dome, power walls, stereo and virtual reality headsets.

Using the World Wide Web To Teach Francophone Culture.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beyer, Deborah Berg; Van Ells, Paula Hartwig

2002-01-01

Examined use of the World Wide Web to teach Francophone culture. Suggests that bolstering reading comprehension in the foreign language and increased proficiency in navigating the Web are potential secondary benefits gained from the cultural Web-based activities proposed in the study.(Author/VWL)

Probabilistic Elastic Part Model: A Pose-Invariant Representation for Real-World Face Verification.

PubMed

Li, Haoxiang; Hua, Gang

2018-04-01

Pose variation remains to be a major challenge for real-world face recognition. We approach this problem through a probabilistic elastic part model. We extract local descriptors (e.g., LBP or SIFT) from densely sampled multi-scale image patches. By augmenting each descriptor with its location, a Gaussian mixture model (GMM) is trained to capture the spatial-appearance distribution of the face parts of all face images in the training corpus, namely the probabilistic elastic part (PEP) model. Each mixture component of the GMM is confined to be a spherical Gaussian to balance the influence of the appearance and the location terms, which naturally defines a part. Given one or multiple face images of the same subject, the PEP-model builds its PEP representation by sequentially concatenating descriptors identified by each Gaussian component in a maximum likelihood sense. We further propose a joint Bayesian adaptation algorithm to adapt the universally trained GMM to better model the pose variations between the target pair of faces/face tracks, which consistently improves face verification accuracy. Our experiments show that we achieve state-of-the-art face verification accuracy with the proposed representations on the Labeled Face in the Wild (LFW) dataset, the YouTube video face database, and the CMU MultiPIE dataset.

Teaching Critical Evaluation Skills for World Wide Web Resources.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tate, Marsha; Alexander, Jan

1996-01-01

Outlines a lesson plan used by an academic library to evaluate the quality of World Wide Web information. Discusses the traditional evaluation criteria of accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage as it applies to the unique characteristics of Web pages: their marketing orientation, variety of information, and instability. The…

Interactions between concentric form-from-structure and face perception revealed by visual masking but not adaptation

PubMed Central

Feczko, Eric; Shulman, Gordon L.; Petersen, Steven E.; Pruett, John R.

2014-01-01

Findings from diverse subfields of vision research suggest a potential link between high-level aspects of face perception and concentric form-from-structure perception. To explore this relationship, typical adults performed two adaptation experiments and two masking experiments to test whether concentric, but not nonconcentric, Glass patterns (a type of form-from-structure stimulus) utilize a processing mechanism shared by face perception. For the adaptation experiments, subjects were presented with an adaptor for 5 or 20 s, prior to discriminating a target. In the masking experiments, subjects saw a mask, then a target, and then a second mask. Measures of discriminability and bias were derived and repeated measures analysis of variance tested for pattern-specific masking and adaptation effects. Results from Experiment 1 show no Glass pattern-specific effect of adaptation to faces; results from Experiment 2 show concentric Glass pattern masking, but not adaptation, may impair upright/inverted face discrimination; results from Experiment 3 show concentric and radial Glass pattern masking impaired subsequent upright/inverted face discrimination more than translational Glass pattern masking; and results from Experiment 4 show concentric and radial Glass pattern masking impaired subsequent face gender discrimination more than translational Glass pattern masking. Taken together, these findings demonstrate interactions between concentric form-from-structure and face processing, suggesting a possible common processing pathway. PMID:24563526

Genetics on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Trangenstein, P A; Hetteberg, C

1998-11-01

Since 1990, when the Human Genome Project was initiated, the amount of genetic information on the World Wide Web (WWW) has grown substantially. The WWW has become an important resource for current, accurate, and reliable genetic information for health care professionals and the general public. The purpose of this article is to provide a variety of genetics-related WWW sites that are useful for all levels of practitioners interested in genetics. In selecting sites to be included in this article, a number of evaluation tools were reviewed. The primary concern was that these sites be reputable and provide accurate, timely information. A table of the WWW sites is included for quick easy reference.

White Supremacists, Oppositional Culture and the World Wide Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Adams, Josh; Roscigno, Vincent J.

2005-01-01

Over the previous decade, white supremacist organizations have tapped into the ever emerging possibilities offered by the World Wide Web. Drawing from prior sociological work that has examined this medium and its uses by white supremacist organizations, this article advances the understanding of recruitment, identity and action by providing a…

Visual Design Principles Applied To World Wide Web Construction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Luck, Donald D.; Hunter, J. Mark

This paper describes basic types of World Wide Web pages and presents design criteria for page layout based on principles of visual literacy. Discussion focuses on pages that present information in the following styles: billboard; directory/index; textual; and graphics. Problems and solutions in Web page construction are explored according to…

Creating a Classroom Kaleidoscope with the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Quinlan, Laurie A.

1997-01-01

Discusses the elements of classroom Web presentations: planning; construction, including design tips; classroom use; and assessment. Lists 14 World Wide Web resources for K-12 teachers; Internet search tools (directories, search engines and meta-search engines); a Web glossary; and an example of HTML for a simple Web page. (PEN)

Patient assessment systems using the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Kohane, I S

1997-02-01

Of the major issues in developing a Web patient assessment system, I have emphasized two main points. First, the World Wide Web can provide substantial leverage in the development of online patient assessment systems. Second, although the existence of Internet technologies does not alter the need to resolve issues that preceded their arrival, current trends suggest that in the home and the office, patient assessment systems will increasingly employ Internet technologies.

Scale-free characteristics of random networks: the topology of the world-wide web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barabási, Albert-László; Albert, Réka; Jeong, Hawoong

2000-06-01

The world-wide web forms a large directed graph, whose vertices are documents and edges are links pointing from one document to another. Here we demonstrate that despite its apparent random character, the topology of this graph has a number of universal scale-free characteristics. We introduce a model that leads to a scale-free network, capturing in a minimal fashion the self-organization processes governing the world-wide web.

Touring the Campus Library from the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mosley, Pixey Anne; Xiao, Daniel

1996-01-01

The philosophy, design, implementation and evaluation of a World Wide Web-accessible Virtual Library Tour of Texas A & M University's Evans Library is presented. Its design combined technical computer issues and library instruction expertise. The tour can be used to simulate a typical walking tour through the library or heading directly to a…

Surfing the World Wide Web to Education Hot-Spots.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dyrli, Odvard Egil

1995-01-01

Provides a brief explanation of Web browsers and their use, as well as technical information for those considering access to the WWW (World Wide Web). Curriculum resources and addresses to useful Web sites are included. Sidebars show sample searches using Yahoo and Lycos search engines, and a list of recommended Web resources. (JKP)

WorldWide Telescope Ambassadors, a Year 3 Update

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Udomprasert, Patricia S.; Goodman, A. A.; Wong, C.

2013-01-01

The WorldWide Telescope Ambassadors (WWTA) Program has a track record of inspiring middle school students and getting them excited about science. The WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is a stunningly beautiful and freely available data visualization environment developed by Microsoft Research in collaboration with professional astronomers. Trained volunteer Ambassadors show teachers and students how to use WWT in their classrooms to explore and learn about our Universe. Our initial study has shown that WWT increases student understanding of astrophysical concepts and interest in astronomy and science. As an example of how excited students feel about learning astronomy with WWT, one middle school boy exclaimed, “This is way cooler than Call of Duty!” Our vision is to capitalize on the demonstrated inspirational and educational potential of WWT to increase the number of students who express interest in STEM fields. In this oral presentation, we provide a status update on the WWTA program, including ongoing results from our work with over 700 middle school students to date, and preliminary results from a new NSF-funded study comparing learning and interest gains for students studying Moon phases with WWT vs with the 2-dimensional simulator activity that accompanies their textbook. More information is available at wwtambassadors.org

Wide-range radioactive-gas-concentration detector

DOEpatents

Anderson, D.F.

1981-11-16

A wide-range radioactive-gas-concentration detector and monitor capable of measuring radioactive-gas concentrations over a range of eight orders of magnitude is described. The device is designed to have an ionization chamber sufficiently small to give a fast response time for measuring radioactive gases but sufficiently large to provide accurate readings at low concentration levels. Closely spaced parallel-plate grids provide a uniform electric field in the active region to improve the accuracy of measurements and reduce ion migration time so as to virtually eliminate errors due to ion recombination. The parallel-plate grids are fabricated with a minimal surface area to reduce the effects of contamination resulting from absorption of contaminating materials on the surface of the grids. Additionally, the ionization-chamber wall is spaced a sufficient distance from the active region of the ionization chamber to minimize contamination effects.

World Wide Web Pages--Tools for Teaching and Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beasley, Sarah; Kent, Jean

Created to help educators incorporate World Wide Web pages into teaching and learning, this collection of Web pages presents resources, materials, and techniques for using the Web. The first page focuses on tools for teaching and learning via the Web, providing pointers to sites containing the following: (1) course materials for both distance and…

Baby Steps: Starting Out on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Simpson, Carol; McElmeel, Sharron L.

1997-01-01

While the Internet is the physical medium used to transport data, the World Wide Web is the collection of protocols and standards used to access the information. This article provides a basic explanation of what the Web is and describes common browser commands. Discusses graphic Web browsers; universal resource locators (URLs); file, message,…

Collaborative Information Agents on the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chen, James R.; Mathe, Nathalie; Wolfe, Shawn; Koga, Dennis J. (Technical Monitor)

1998-01-01

In this paper, we present DIAMS, a system of distributed, collaborative information agents which help users access, collect, organize, and exchange information on the World Wide Web. Personal agents provide their owners dynamic displays of well organized information collections, as well as friendly information management utilities. Personal agents exchange information with one another. They also work with other types of information agents such as matchmakers and knowledge experts to facilitate collaboration and communication.

Distributing Congestion Management System Information Using the World Wide Web

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1997-01-01

The Internet is a unique medium for the distribution of information, and it provides a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of peoples innate interest in transportation issues as they relate to their own lives. In particular, the World Wide Web (...

Student participation in World Wide Web-based curriculum development of general chemistry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hunter, William John Forbes

1998-12-01

This thesis describes an action research investigation of improvements to instruction in General Chemistry at Purdue University. Specifically, the study was conducted to guide continuous reform of curriculum materials delivered via the World Wide Web by involving students, instructors, and curriculum designers. The theoretical framework for this study was based upon constructivist learning theory and knowledge claims were developed using an inductive analysis procedure. This results of this study are assertions made in three domains: learning chemistry content via the World Wide Web, learning about learning via the World Wide Web, and learning about participation in an action research project. In the chemistry content domain, students were able to learn chemical concepts that utilized 3-dimensional visualizations, but not textual and graphical information delivered via the Web. In the learning via the Web domain, the use of feedback, the placement of supplementary aids, navigation, and the perception of conceptual novelty were all important to students' use of the Web. In the participation in action research domain, students learned about the complexity of curriculum. development, and valued their empowerment as part of the process.

76 FR 46854 - Hewlett Packard Company, Imaging and Printing Group, World Wide Product Data Management...

Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

2011-08-03

..., Imaging and Printing Group, World Wide Product Data Management Operations, Including On-Site Leased... Company, Imaging and Printing Group, World Wide Products Data Management Operations, Boise, Idaho and Fort... Management Operations. The Department has determined that these workers were sufficiently under the control...

The Impact on Education of the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hobbs, D. J.; Taylor, R. J.

This paper describes a project which created a set of World Wide Web (WWW) pages documenting the state of the art in educational multimedia design; a prototype WWW-based multimedia teaching tool--a podiatry test using HTML forms, 24-bit color images and MPEG video--was also designed, developed, and evaluated. The project was conducted between…

Wide range radioactive gas concentration detector

DOEpatents

Anderson, David F.

1984-01-01

A wide range radioactive gas concentration detector and monitor which is capable of measuring radioactive gas concentrations over a range of eight orders of magnitude. The device of the present invention is designed to have an ionization chamber which is sufficiently small to give a fast response time for measuring radioactive gases but sufficiently large to provide accurate readings at low concentration levels. Closely spaced parallel plate grids provide a uniform electric field in the active region to improve the accuracy of measurements and reduce ion migration time so as to virtually eliminate errors due to ion recombination. The parallel plate grids are fabricated with a minimal surface area to reduce the effects of contamination resulting from absorption of contaminating materials on the surface of the grids. Additionally, the ionization chamber wall is spaced a sufficient distance from the active region of the ionization chamber to minimize contamination effects.

CliniWeb: managing clinical information on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Hersh, W R; Brown, K E; Donohoe, L C; Campbell, E M; Horacek, A E

1996-01-01

The World Wide Web is a powerful new way to deliver on-line clinical information, but several problems limit its value to health care professionals: content is highly distributed and difficult to find, clinical information is not separated from non-clinical information, and the current Web technology is unable to support some advanced retrieval capabilities. A system called CliniWeb has been developed to address these problems. CliniWeb is an index to clinical information on the World Wide Web, providing a browsing and searching interface to clinical content at the level of the health care student or provider. Its database contains a list of clinical information resources on the Web that are indexed by terms from the Medical Subject Headings disease tree and retrieved with the assistance of SAPHIRE. Limitations of the processes used to build the database are discussed, together with directions for future research.

Automated MeSH indexing of the World-Wide Web.

PubMed Central

Fowler, J.; Kouramajian, V.; Maram, S.; Devadhar, V.

1995-01-01

To facilitate networked discovery and information retrieval in the biomedical domain, we have designed a system for automatic assignment of Medical Subject Headings to documents retrieved from the World-Wide Web. Our prototype implementations show significant promise. We describe our methods and discuss the further development of a completely automated indexing tool called the "Web-MeSH Medibot." PMID:8563421

Publishing biomedical journals on the World-Wide Web using an open architecture model.

PubMed Central

Shareck, E. P.; Greenes, R. A.

1996-01-01

BACKGROUND: In many respects, biomedical publications are ideally suited for distribution via the World-Wide Web, but economic concerns have prevented the rapid adoption of an on-line publishing model. PURPOSE: We report on our experiences with assisting biomedical journals in developing an online presence, issues that were encountered, and methods used to address these issues. Our approach is based on an open architecture that fosters adaptation and interconnection of biomedical resources. METHODS: We have worked with the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), as well as five other publishers. A set of tools and protocols was employed to develop a scalable and customizable solution for publishing journals on-line. RESULTS: In March, 1996, the New England Journal of Medicine published its first World-Wide Web issue. Explorations with other publishers have helped to generalize the model. CONCLUSIONS: Economic and technical issues play a major role in developing World-Wide Web publishing solutions. PMID:8947685

Gopher Is No Longer Just a Rodent: Using Gopher and World Wide Web in Composition Studies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Krause, Steve

Gopher and World Wide Web (WWW) are two useful Internet technologies for the composition and rhetoric classroom. Gopher software makes available a wide variety of text-based information in the Internet. A Gopher at Bowling Green State University offers many types of information. The World Wide Web, using a fairly simple markup language, is also…

Strong regularities in world wide web surfing

PubMed

Huberman; Pirolli; Pitkow; Lukose

1998-04-03

One of the most common modes of accessing information in the World Wide Web is surfing from one document to another along hyperlinks. Several large empirical studies have revealed common patterns of surfing behavior. A model that assumes that users make a sequence of decisions to proceed to another page, continuing as long as the value of the current page exceeds some threshold, yields the probability distribution for the number of pages that a user visits within a given Web site. This model was verified by comparing its predictions with detailed measurements of surfing patterns. The model also explains the observed Zipf-like distributions in page hits observed at Web sites.

Market Research: The World Wide Web Meets the Online Services.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bing, Michelle

1996-01-01

The World Wide Web can provide direct market research data inexpensively or can target the appropriate professional online database and narrow the search. This article discusses the Web presence of research and investment firms, financial pages, trade associations, and electronic publications containing market research data. It lists Uniform…

Exploring Geology on the World-Wide Web--Volcanoes and Volcanism.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Schimmrich, Steven Henry; Gore, Pamela J. W.

1996-01-01

Focuses on sites on the World Wide Web that offer information about volcanoes. Web sites are classified into areas of Global Volcano Information, Volcanoes in Hawaii, Volcanoes in Alaska, Volcanoes in the Cascades, European and Icelandic Volcanoes, Extraterrestrial Volcanism, Volcanic Ash and Weather, and Volcano Resource Directories. Suggestions…

Collaborative Design of World Wide Web Pages: A Case Study.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Andrew, Paige G; Musser, Linda R.

1997-01-01

This case study of the collaborative design of an earth science World Wide Web page at Pennsylvania State University highlights the role of librarians. Discusses the original Web site and links, planning, the intended audience, and redesign and recommended changes; and considers the potential contributions of librarians. (LRW)

The World-Wide Web and Mosaic: An Overview for Librarians.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morgan, Eric Lease

1994-01-01

Provides an overview of the Internet's World-Wide Web (Web), a hypertext system. Highlights include the client/server model; Uniform Resource Locator; examples of software; Web servers versus Gopher servers; HyperText Markup Language (HTML); converting files; Common Gateway Interface; organizing Web information; and the role of librarians in…

What is WorldWide Telescope, and Why Should Researchers Care?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Goodman, Alyssa A.

2016-01-01

As of 2015, about 20 million people have downloaded the computer program called "WorldWide Telescope," and even more have accessed it via the web, at http://worldwidetelescope.org. But, the vast majority of these millions are not professional astronomers. This talk will explain why WorldWide Telescope (WWT) is also a powerful tool for research astronomers. I will focus on how WWT can be, and is, being built-in to Journals, and into day-to-day research environments. By way of example, I will show how WWT already: allows users to display images, including those in Journals, in the context of multi-wavelength full-sky imagery; allows for the display of which parts of the Sky have been studied, when, how, and for what reason (see http://adsass.org); allows, via right-click, immediate access to ADS, SIMBAD, and other professional research tools. I will also highlight new work, currently in development, that is using WWT as a tool for observation planning, and as a display mode for advanced high-dimensional data visualization tools, like glue (see http://glueviz.org). WWT is now well-known in the education community (see http://wwtambassadors.org), so the explicit goal of this talk will be to make researchers more aware of its full power. I will explain how WWT transitioned, over 8 years, from a Microsoft Research project to its current open-source state (see https://github.com/WorldWideTelescope), and I will conclude with comments on the future of WWT, and its relationship to how research should be carried out in the future (see http://tinyurl.com/aas-potf).

The Virtual City: Putting Charleston on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beagle, Donald

1996-01-01

Describes the Charleston Multimedia Project, a World Wide Web guide to the history, architecture, and culture of Charleston, South Carolina, which includes a timeline and virtual tours. Incorporates materials issued by many agencies that were previously held in vertical files. The Charleston County Library's role and future plans are also…

The Relationship of the World Wide Web to Thinking Skills.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bradshaw, Amy C.; Bishop, Jeanne L.; Gens, Linda S.; Miller, Sharla L.; Rogers, Martha A.

2002-01-01

Discusses use of the World Wide Web in education and its possibilities for developing higher order critical thinking skills to successfully deal with the demands of the future information society. Suggests that teachers need to provide learning environments that are learner-centered, authentic, problem-based, and collaborative. (Contains 61…

Interactivity, Information Processing, and Learning on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tremayne, Mark; Dunwoody, Sharon

2001-01-01

Examines the role of interactivity in the presentation of science news on the World Wide Web. Proposes and tests a model of interactive information processing that suggests that characteristics of users and Web sites influence interactivity, which influences knowledge acquisition. Describes use of a think-aloud method to study participants' mental…

Perspectives for Electronic Books in the World Wide Web Age.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bry, Francois; Kraus, Michael

2002-01-01

Discusses the rapid growth of the World Wide Web and the lack of use of electronic books and suggests that specialized contents and device independence can make Web-based books compete with print. Topics include enhancing the hypertext model of XML; client-side adaptation, including browsers and navigation; and semantic modeling. (Author/LRW)

Service Learning and Building Community with the World Wide Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Longan, Michael W.

2007-01-01

The geography education literature touts the World Wide Web (Web) as a revolutionary educational tool, yet most accounts ignore its uses for public communication and creative expression. This article argues that students can be producers of content that is of service to local audiences. Drawing inspiration from the community networking movement,…

World Wide Web home page for the South Platte NAWQA

USGS Publications Warehouse

Qi, Sharon L.; Dennehy, Kevin F.

1997-01-01

A World Wide Web home page for the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS) National Water-Quality Assessment (NAWQA) Program, South Platte River Basin study is now online. The home page includes information about the basinwide investigation and provides viewing and downloading access to physical, chemical, and biological data collected by the study team.

Teaching Intrapersonal Communication with the World-Wide Web: Cognitive Technology.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shedletsky, Leonard J.; Aitken, Joan E.

This paper offers a brief description of a course on intrapersonal communication with a home page approach using the World Wide Web. The paper notes that students use the home page for completing assignments, readings, posting responses, self-evaluation testing, research, and displaying some of their papers for the course. The paper contains…

Technical Considerations in Remote LIMS Access via the World Wide Web

PubMed Central

Schlabach, David M.

2005-01-01

The increased dependency on the World Wide Web by both laboratories and their customers has led LIMS developers to take advantage of thin-client web applications that provide both remote data entry and manipulation, along with remote reporting functionality. Use of an LIMS through a web browser allows a person to interact with a distant application, providing both remote administration and real-time analytical result delivery from virtually anywhere in the world. While there are many benefits of web-based LIMS applications, some concern must be given to these new methods of system architecture before justifying them as a suitable replacement for their traditional client-server systems. Developers and consumers alike must consider the security aspects of introducing a wide area network capable system into a production environment, as well as the concerns of data integrity and usability. PMID:18924736

Towards Understanding Different Faces of School Violence in Different "Worlds" of One Country

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jacobs, Lynette

2013-01-01

The legacy of South Africa's destructive history is still evident in the different worlds in which South Africans live. Quality education is compromised by violence occurring in schools and role-players must face school violence and take steps to deal with it. This can only be done if school violence is deeply understood within the various school…

Universities Face Wide-Ranging Changes

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Krieger, James H.

1976-01-01

Discusses problems facing the research university, including declining enrollments and funds, fewer opportunities for graduates, and the complexity of research problems. Recommends making more efficient use of resources, improving communications with the broader public, and reducing economic and social barriers to obtaining a higher education.…

Guiding Students in Using the World Wide Web for Research.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kubly, Kristin

This paper addresses the need for educators and librarians to guide students in using the World Wide Web appropriately by teaching them to evaluate Internet resources using criteria designed to identify the authoritative sources. The pros and cons of information commonly found on the Web are discussed, as well as academic Internet subject or…

Remote sensing education and Internet/World Wide Web technology

USGS Publications Warehouse

Griffith, J.A.; Egbert, S.L.

2001-01-01

Remote sensing education is increasingly in demand across academic and professional disciplines. Meanwhile, Internet technology and the World Wide Web (WWW) are being more frequently employed as teaching tools in remote sensing and other disciplines. The current wealth of information on the Internet and World Wide Web must be distilled, nonetheless, to be useful in remote sensing education. An extensive literature base is developing on the WWW as a tool in education and in teaching remote sensing. This literature reveals benefits and limitations of the WWW, and can guide its implementation. Among the most beneficial aspects of the Web are increased access to remote sensing expertise regardless of geographic location, increased access to current material, and access to extensive archives of satellite imagery and aerial photography. As with other teaching innovations, using the WWW/Internet may well mean more work, not less, for teachers, at least at the stage of early adoption. Also, information posted on Web sites is not always accurate. Development stages of this technology range from on-line posting of syllabi and lecture notes to on-line laboratory exercises and animated landscape flyovers and on-line image processing. The advantages of WWW/Internet technology may likely outweigh the costs of implementing it as a teaching tool.

U.S. Navy Marine Climatic Atlas of the World. Volume IX. World-Wide Means and Standard Deviations

DTIC Science & Technology

1981-10-01

TITLE (..d SobtII,) S. TYPE OF REPORT & PERIOD COVERED U. S. Navy Marine Climatic Atlas of the World Volume IX World-wide Means and Standard Reference...Ives the best estimate of the population standard deviations. The means, , are com~nuted from: EX IIN I 90 80 70 60" 50’ 40, 30 20 10 0 1070 T- VErr ...or 10%, whichever is greater Since the mean ice limit approximates the minus two de l temperature isopleth, this analyzed lower limit was Wave Heights

Improvements in Empirical Modelling of the World-Wide Ionosphere

DTIC Science & Technology

1986-10-31

The fact that the world-wide distribution of the basic inputs is far from being uniform forced Gallet and Jones to develop . a special procedure for...made the result more reasonable, it had a disappointing effect on the latitudinal variation over the oceans. Feeling that shifting along circles of...range. Ano- ther vertical profile model is used in the Bent-model4 which is applied in NASA practice for computing the different effects of

World Wide Web Homepages: An Examination of Content and Audience.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Reynolds, Betty; And Others

This paper shows how the content of a World Wide Web page is selected and how an examination of the intended audience influences content. Examples from the New Mexico Tech (NMT) Library homepage show what sources are selected and what level of detail is appropriate for the intended audience. Six fundamental functions of libraries and information…

Integrating Mathematics, Science, and Language Arts Instruction Using the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clark, Kenneth; Hosticka, Alice; Kent, Judi; Browne, Ron

1998-01-01

Addresses issues of access to World Wide Web sites, mathematics and science content-resources available on the Web, and methods for integrating mathematics, science, and language arts instruction. (Author/ASK)

Medical mentoring via the evolving world wide web.

PubMed

Jaffer, Usman; Vaughan-Huxley, Eyston; Standfield, Nigel; John, Nigel W

2013-01-01

Mentoring, for physicians and surgeons in training, is advocated as an essential adjunct in work-based learning, providing support in career and non-career related issues. The World Wide Web (WWW) has evolved, as a technology, to become more interactive and person centric, tailoring itself to the individual needs of the user. This changing technology may open new avenues to foster mentoring in medicine. DESIGN, SYSTEMATIC REVIEW, MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: A search of the MEDLINE database from 1950 to 2012 using the PubMed interface, combined with manual cross-referencing was performed using the following strategy: ("mentors"[MeSH Terms] OR "mentors"[All Fields] OR "mentor"[All Fields]) AND ("internet"[MeSH Terms] OR "internet"[All Fields]) AND ("medicine"[MeSH Terms] OR "medicine"[All Fields]) AND ("humans"[MeSH Terms] AND English[lang]). Abstracts were screened for relevance (UJ) to the topic; eligibility for inclusion was simply on screening for relevance to online mentoring and web-based technologies. Forty-five papers were found, of which 16 were relevant. All studies were observational in nature. To date, all medical mentoring applications utilizing the World Wide Web have enjoyed some success limited by Web 1.0 and 2.0 technologies. With the evolution of the WWW through 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 generations, the potential for meaningful tele- and distance mentoring has greatly improved. Some engagement has been made with these technological advancements, however further work is required to fully realize the potential of these technologies. Copyright © 2012 Association of Program Directors in Surgery. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Marketing and Selling CD-ROM Products on the World-Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walker, Becki

1995-01-01

Describes three companies' approaches to marketing and selling CD-ROM products on the World Wide Web. Benefits include low overhead for Internet-based sales, allowance for creativity, and ability to let customers preview products online. Discusses advertising, information delivery, content, information services, and security. (AEF)

Radar Images of the Earth and the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chapman, B.; Freeman, A.

1995-01-01

A perspective of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a center of planetary exploration, and its involvement in studying the earth from space is given. Remote sensing, radar maps, land topography, snow cover properties, vegetation type, biomass content, moisture levels, and ocean data are items discussed related to earth orbiting satellite imaging radar. World Wide Web viewing of this content is discussed.

Dense-array concentrator photovoltaic system using non-imaging dish concentrator and crossed compound parabolic concentrator

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chong, Kok-Keong; Yew, Tiong-Keat; Wong, Chee-Woon; Tan, Ming-Hui; Tan, Woei-Chong; Lai, An-Chow; Lim, Boon-Han; Lau, Sing-Liong; Rahman, Faidz Abdul

2015-04-01

Solar concentrating device plays an important role by making use of optical technology in the design, which can be either reflector or lens to deliver high flux of sunlight onto the Concentrator Photovoltaic (CPV) module receiver ranging from hundreds to thousand suns. To be more competitive compared with fossil fuel, the current CPV systems using Fresnel lens and Parabolic dish as solar concentrator that are widely deployed in United States, Australia and Europe are facing great challenge to produce uniformly focused sunlight on the solar cells as to reduce the cost of electrical power generation. The concept of non-imaging optics is not new, but it has not fully explored by the researchers over the world especially in solving the problem of high concentration solar energy, which application is only limited to be a secondary focusing device or low concentration device using Compound Parabolic Concentrator. With the current advancement in the computer processing power, we has successfully invented the non-imaging dish concentrator (NIDC) using numerical simulation method to replace the current parabolic dish as primary focusing device with high solar concentration ratio (more than 400 suns) and large collective area (from 25 to 125 m2). In this paper, we disclose our research and development on dense array CPV system based on non-imaging optics. The geometry of the NIDC is determined using a special computational method. In addition, an array of secondary concentrators, namely crossed compound parabolic concentrators, is also proposed to further focus the concentrated sunlight by the NIDC onto active area of solar cells of the concentrator photovoltaic receiver. The invention maximizes the absorption of concentrated sunlight for the electric power generation system.

The Challenge of Urbanization. The World's Large Cities.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

United Nations New York, NY. Dept. of Economic and Social Information and Policy Analysis.

This publication concentrates on city problems and special city planning issues in the world's large cities, pinpointing their demographic characteristics, economic structure, available social services, and infrastructures, as well as current issues facing city planners. Profiles of 100 large cities across the world, from Abidjan to Yangon, make…

Face transplantation for the blind: more than being blind in a sighted world.

PubMed

Lee, Joseph

2018-06-01

Face transplantation (FT) is a landmark in reconstructive surgery involving vascularised composite allotransplantation. A recent issue of FT for patients who are blind has arisen. Some bioethicists recommend not excluding a patient who is blind, as this may amount to discrimination. From an ethical standpoint, FT for those with blindness is appropriate in selected candidates. This article seeks to add to the clinical evidence supporting FT for those with blindness by detailing a complementary psychosocial perspective. Currently, there is little relevant research about the subjectivity of the blind. This is critical since the arguments against FT for the blind refer to their inability to see their face and to view the reaction of others to their disfigured faces. We begin with a brief look at examples of FT involving blindness and associated arguments. The next part is a multidisciplinary investigation of the experiences of the blind. These are gleaned from a close reading of the literature and drawing inferences, as direct studies are rare. The discussion analyses identity themes of the blind in relation to their faces: as they experience it; the face they wish to show to the world; and how others perceive and react to their face in a saturated environment of imagery and visual communication. Disability and the blind person's experience of faces are well-founded considerations for medical practitioners and ethics boards in the process of FT decision-making. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2018. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

Documenting historical data and accessing it on the World Wide Web

Treesearch

Malchus B. Baker; Daniel P. Huebner; Peter F. Ffolliott

2000-01-01

New computer technologies facilitate the storage, retrieval, and summarization of watershed-based data sets on the World Wide Web. These data sets are used by researchers when testing and validating predictive models, managers when planning and implementing watershed management practices, educators when learning about hydrologic processes, and decisionmakers when...

Internet: Teaching about the 1996 Elections with the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Risinger, C. Frederick

1996-01-01

Briefly explores a number of World Wide Web sites devoted to providing information about the 1996 elections. Evaluates web sites maintained by the Atlantic Monthly, Congressional Quarterly, CNN, and MTV. While most sites cover the national election, at least one, ElectNet, focuses on state and local elections. (MJP)

How Commercial Banks Use the World Wide Web: A Content Analysis.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leovic, Lydia K.

New telecommunications vehicles expand the possible ways that business is conducted. The hypermedia portion of the Internet, the World Wide Web, is such a telecommunications device. The Web is presently one of the most flexible and dynamic methods for electronic information dissemination. The level of technological sophistication necessary to…

World Wide Webs: Crossing the Digital Divide through Promotion of Public Access

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Coetzee, Liezl

“As Bill Gates and Steve Case proclaim the global omnipresence of the Internet, the majority of non-Western nations and 97 per cent of the world's population remain unconnected to the net for lack of money, access, or knowledge. This exclusion of so vast a share of the global population from the Internet sharply contradicts the claims of those who posit the World Wide Web as a ‘universal' medium of egalitarian communication.” (Trend 2001:2)

World Wide Web Resources for Teaching and Learning Economics. ERIC Digest.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

VanFossen, Phillip J.

Technological resources abound for teachers of all subject areas, but for many reasons, such instructional technology seems to lend itself well to the social studies including economics. To help teachers efficiently use the latest economics resources available on the World Wide Web, this Digest identifies four sites that offer knowledge of…

Outreach to International Students and Scholars Using the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wei, Wei

1998-01-01

Describes the creation of a World Wide Web site for the Science Library International Outreach Program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Discusses design elements, content, and promotion of the site. Copies of the home page and the page containing the outreach program's statement of purpose are included. (AEF)

Distance Learning, the Internet, and the World Wide Web. ERIC Digest.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kerka, Sandra

Some of the newest methods of distance learning (DL) use the Internet and the World Wide Web. DL on the Internet usually takes one of the following forms: electronic mail; bulletin boards/newsgroups; downloading of course materials or tutorials; interactive tutorials on the Web; real-time, interactive conferencing; "intranets" (internal,…

Information about liver transplantation on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Hanif, F; Sivaprakasam, R; Butler, A; Huguet, E; Pettigrew, G J; Michael, E D A; Praseedom, R K; Jamieson, N V; Bradley, J A; Gibbs, P

2006-09-01

Orthotopic liver transplant (OLTx) has evolved to a successful surgical management for end-stage liver diseases. Awareness and information about OLTx is an important tool in assisting OLTx recipients and people supporting them, including non-transplant clinicians. The study aimed to investigate the nature and quality of liver transplant-related patient information on the World Wide Web. Four common search engines were used to explore the Internet by using the key words 'Liver transplant'. The URL (unique resource locator) of the top 50 returns was chosen as it was judged unlikely that the average user would search beyond the first 50 sites returned by a given search. Each Web site was assessed on the following categories: origin, language, accessibility and extent of the information. A weighted Information Score (IS) was created to assess the quality of clinical and educational value of each Web site and was scored independently by three transplant clinicians. The Internet search performed with the aid of the four search engines yielded a total of 2,255,244 Web sites. Of the 200 possible sites, only 58 Web sites were assessed because of repetition of the same Web sites and non-accessible links. The overall median weighted IS was 22 (IQR 1 - 42). Of the 58 Web sites analysed, 45 (77%) belonged to USA, six (10%) were European, and seven (12%) were from the rest of the world. The median weighted IS of publications originating from Europe and USA was 40 (IQR = 22 - 60) and 23 (IQR = 6 - 38), respectively. Although European Web sites produced a higher weighted IS [40 (IQR = 22 - 60)] as compared with the USA publications [23 (IQR = 6 - 38)], this was not statistically significant (p = 0.07). Web sites belonging to the academic institutions and the professional organizations scored significantly higher with a median weighted IS of 28 (IQR = 16 - 44) and 24(12 - 35), respectively, as compared with the commercial Web sites (median = 6 with IQR of 0 - 14, p = .001). There

The informatics superhighway: prototyping on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Cimino, J J; Socratous, S A; Grewal, R

1995-01-01

We have experimented with developing a prototype Surgeon's Workstation which makes use of the World Wide Web client-server architecture. Although originally intended merely as a means for obtaining user feedback for use in designing a "real" system, the application has been adopted for use by our Department of Surgery. As they begin to use the application, they have suggested changes and we have responded. This paper illustrates some of the advantages we have found for prototyping with Web-based applications, including security aspects.

Interactive Display of High-Resolution Images on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Clyde, Stephen W.; Hirschi, Gregory W.

Viewing high-resolution images on the World Wide Web at a level of detail necessary for collaborative research is still a problem today, given the Internet's current bandwidth limitations and its ever increasing network traffic. ImageEyes is an interactive display tool being developed at Utah State University that addresses this problem by…

Social Desirability Responding on World Wide Web and Paper-Administered Surveys.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hancock, Dawson R.; Flowers, Claudia P.

Social desirability responding (SDR) on surveys administered on the World Wide Web and on paper was examined, with 178 graduate and undergraduate students as participants. To assess the extent to which participants would demonstrate SDR, this study used the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) (Paulhus, 1993). The BIDR consists of 40…

Image Maps in the World-Wide Web: The Uses and Limitations.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cochenour, John J.; And Others

A study of nine different image maps from World Wide Web home pages was conducted to evaluate their effectiveness in information display and access, relative to visual, navigational, and practical characteristics. Nine independent viewers completed 20-question surveys on the image maps, in which they evaluated the characteristics of the maps on a…

XML: A Language To Manage the World Wide Web. ERIC Digest.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davis-Tanous, Jennifer R.

This digest provides an overview of XML (Extensible Markup Language), a markup language used to construct World Wide Web pages. Topics addressed include: (1) definition of a markup language, including comparison of XML with SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and HTML (HyperText Markup Language); (2) how XML works, including sample tags,…

Meeting the challenge of finding resources for ophthalmic nurses on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Duffel, P G

1998-12-01

The World Wide Web ("the Web") is a macrocosm of resources that can be overwhelming. Often the sheer volume of material available causes one to give up in despair before finding information of any use. The Web is such a popular resource that it cannot be ignored. Two of the biggest challenges to finding good information on the Web are knowing where to start and judging whether the information gathered is pertinent and credible. This article addresses these two challenges and introduces the reader to a variety of ophthalmology and vision science resources on the World Wide Web.

Starry Nights: The Great World Wide Star Count

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Ward, D. L.; Meymaris, K.; Russell, R.; Gallagher, S.

2007-12-01

Increased and robust understanding of our environment requires learning opportunities that take place outside of the conventional K-12 classroom and beyond the confines of the school day. There has been an increase in extracurricular activities that bring students into the "real world", sometimes spanning past the regular school year, and often times including other family and/or community members. Citizen science or public engagement activities are becoming available across many disciplines and are attracting the attention of people of all ages. The Great World Wide Star Count is an international citizen science event encouraging everyone to go outside, look skywards after dark, count the stars they see in certain constellations, and report what they see online. This inaugural Windows After Dark event is designed to raise awareness about light pollution and the night sky as well as promote learning in astronomy. The activities of Star Count benefit from the current excitement in citizen science, with 15 nights of observing in October. Utilizing the international networking capabilities of Windows to the Universe, Star Count is able to engage people around the world. Data collection and online reporting is designed to be simple and user-friendly for citizen- scientists of all ages. The collected data is available online in a variety of formats for use by students, teachers and scientists worldwide to assess how the quality of the night sky varies around the world. This session will share our results and demonstrate how students and scientists worldwide can explore and analyze the results of this exciting campaign. We will discuss how the project team planned and executed the project in such a way that non-astronomers were able to make valid and useful contributions. We will also discuss lessons learned and best practices based on this inaugural campaign.

A review of images of nurses and smoking on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Sarna, Linda; Bialous, Stella Aguinaga

2012-01-01

With the advent of the World Wide Web, historic images previously having limited distributions are now widely available. As tobacco use has evolved, so have images of nurses related to smoking. Using a systematic search, the purpose of this article is to describe types of images of nurses and smoking available on the World Wide Web. Approximately 10,000 images of nurses and smoking published over the past century were identified through search engines and digital archives. Seven major themes were identified: nurses smoking, cigarette advertisements, helping patients smoke, "naughty" nurse, teaching women to smoke, smoking in and outside of health care facilities, and antitobacco images. The use of nursing images to market cigarettes was known but the extent of the use of these images has not been reported previously. Digital archives can be used to explore the past, provide a perspective for understanding the present, and suggest directions for the future in confronting negative images of nursing. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Distributing flight dynamics products via the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Woodard, Mark; Matusow, David

1996-01-01

The NASA Flight Dynamics Products Center (FDPC), which make available selected operations products via the World Wide Web, is reported on. The FDPC can be accessed from any host machine connected to the Internet. It is a multi-mission service which provides Internet users with unrestricted access to the following standard products: antenna contact predictions; ground tracks; orbit ephemerides; mean and osculating orbital elements; earth sensor sun and moon interference predictions; space flight tracking data network summaries; and Shuttle transport system predictions. Several scientific data bases are available through the service.

WorldWide Telescope in High School Astronomy Competitions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Constantin, Ana-Maria; Goodman, A. A.; Udomprasert, P. S.

2014-01-01

This project aims to improve astronomy education at the high school level, and to increase awareness in astronomy for pre-university students, on an international scale. In 2013, the WorldWide Telescope Ambassadors Program began a collaboration with the International Olympiad in Astronomy and Astrophysics (IOAA), which was held in the city of Volos, Greece in August 2013. Now at its VIIth edition, IOAA is the largest annual astronomy competition for high school students, and it consists of one team task and three individual ones - Theoretical, Data Analysis, and Observational. Each of the participating countries (35 in 2013, compared to 21 in 2007) is responsible for selecting up to five representative students for the International round. IOAA is meant to promote future collaborations between these students, and to encourage friendships inside a global scientific community. Ana-Maria Constantin, a current Harvard undergraduate student and a former medalist of IOAA, represented WorldWide Telescope Ambassadors in Greece by giving a talk on the advantages of using WWT as a tool for research and education. As a result, the President and the International Board of the Olympiad have expressed support for including WWT in the competition for future editions. WWTA is working with the Organizing Board for next year’s competition in Romania, to include WWT as a testing tool. This poster will summarize key points from the WWTA presentation in Greece, present ideas for WWT-based activities in future IOAA competitions, and outline plans for new collaborations from representatives of Sri Lanka, Poland, Bangladesh, and Colombia. Given the positive feedback we have received after the presentation in Greece, we are also considering future implementations of WWT in summer research camps for high school students, such as the Summer Science Program.

The Land of Confusion? High School Students and Their Use of the World Wide Web for Research.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lorenzen, Michael

2002-01-01

Examines high school students' use of the World Wide Web to complete assignments. Findings showed the students used a good variety of resources, including libraries and the World Wide Web, to find information for assignments. However, students were weak at determining the quality of the information found on web sites. Students did poorly at…

Combining Face-to-Face Learning with Online Learning in Virtual Worlds

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berns, Anke; Gonzalez-Pardo, Antonio; Camacho, David

2012-01-01

This paper focuses on the development of videogame-like applications in a 3D virtual environment as a complement to the face-to-face teaching and learning. With the changing role of teaching and learning and the increasing use of "blended learning," instructors are increasingly expected to explore new ways to attend to the needs of their…

An Enhanced Z39.50 Gateway to the WorldWideWeb.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cunningham, David; Sloan, Stephen

1994-01-01

Describes how a university library uses the WorldWideWeb (WWW) to enable users to access resources mounted on a local Z39.50 server and to order prints from articles stored on a CD-ROM jukebox. The software used in the construction of the system, necessary modifications to the software, and software ordering information are covered. (KRN)

Guide to the Internet. The world wide web.

PubMed Central

Pallen, M.

1995-01-01

The world wide web provides a uniform, user friendly interface to the Internet. Web pages can contain text and pictures and are interconnected by hypertext links. The addresses of web pages are recorded as uniform resource locators (URLs), transmitted by hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), and written in hypertext markup language (HTML). Programs that allow you to use the web are available for most operating systems. Powerful on line search engines make it relatively easy to find information on the web. Browsing through the web--"net surfing"--is both easy and enjoyable. Contributing to the web is not difficult, and the web opens up new possibilities for electronic publishing and electronic journals. Images p1554-a Fig 5 PMID:8520402

Use of the World Wide Web for multisite data collection.

PubMed

Subramanian, A K; McAfee, A T; Getzinger, J P

1997-08-01

As access to the Internet becomes increasingly available, research applications in medicine will increase. This paper describes the use of the Internet, and, more specifically, the World Wide Web (WWW), as a channel of communication between EDs throughout the world and investigators who are interested in facilitating the collection of data from multiple sites. Data entered into user-friendly electronic surveys can be transmitted over the Internet to a database located at the site of the study, rendering geographic separation less of a barrier to the conduction of multisite studies. The electronic format of the data can enable real-time statistical processing while data are stored using existing database technologies. In theory, automated processing of variables within such a database enables early identification of data trends. Methods of ensuring validity, security, and compliance are discussed.

World's Biggest Astronomy Event on the World-Wide

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

1996-06-01

`Astronomy On-Line' will connect students all over Europe Astronomy On-Line is a major, all-European project that will take place in conjunction with the 4th European Week for Scientific and Technological Culture later this year. It is based on intensive use of the World-Wide-Web (WWW) and represents the first large-scale attempt in the world to bring together pupils and their teachers all over one continent to explore challenging scientific questions, using modern communication tools, both for obtaining and for communicating information. The programme will be carried out in a collaboration between the European Association for Astronomy Education (EAAE) [1] and the European Southern Observatory, and together with the European Commission (EC). The active phase of Astronomy On-Line will start on October 1 and reach a climax on November 18 - 22, 1996 . What is `Astronomy On-Line'? In this project, a large number of students and their teachers at schools all over Europe, together with professional and amateur astronomers and others interested in astronomy, will become associated in a unique experience that makes intensive use of the vast possibilities of the World-Wide-Web (WWW). Although the exact number of participants will not be known until the beginning of October, it is expected to run into thousands, possibly many more. The unusual size and scope of Astronomy On-Line will contribute to make it an important all-European media event. The central idea is that the participants, through the WWW, will `meet' in a `marketplace' where a number of different `shops' will be available, each of which will tempt them with a number of exciting and educational `events', carefully prepared to cater for different age groups, from 12 years upwards. The events will cover a wide spectrum of activities, some of which will be timed to ensure the proper progression of this very complex project through its main phases. The benefits In fact, Astronomy On-Line will be the first

Sky online: linking amateur and professional astronomers on the world wide web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fienberg, Richard Tresch

SKY Online is the World Wide Web site of Sky Publishing Corporation, publisher of Sky & Telescope magazine. Conceived mainly as an electronic extension of the company's marketing and promotion efforts, SKY Online has also proven to be a useful tool for communication between amateur and professional astronomers.

Affordable Digital Planetariums with WorldWide Telescope

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rosenfield, P.; Connolly, A.; Fay, J.; Sayres, C.; Tofflemire, B.

2011-09-01

Digital planetariums can provide a broader range of educational experiences than the more classical planetariums that use star-balls. This is because of their ability to project images, content from current research, and the 3-D distribution of the stars and galaxies. While there are hundreds of planetariums in the country, the reason that few of these are fully digital is the cost. In collaboration with Microsoft Research (MSR), we have developed a way to digitize existing planetariums for approximately $40,000 using freely available software. We describe here how off the shelf equipment, together with a WorldWide Telescope client, can provide a rich and truly interactive experience. This will enable students and the public to pan though multi-wavelength full-sky scientific data sets, explore 3-D visualizations of our Solar System (including trajectories of millions of minor planets), near-by stars, and the SDSS galaxy catalog.

[HyperPsych--resources for medicine and psychology on the World Wide Web].

PubMed

Laszig, P

1997-07-01

Progress in the research of interactive communication technology and the acceleration of processing and transmitting information have promoted the development of computer networks allowing global access to scientific information and services. The recently most well-known net is the internet. Based on its integrative structure as a communication-directed as well as an information-directed medium, the internet helps researchers design scientific research. Especially medicine and psychology as information-dependent scientific disciplines may profit by using this technological offer. As a method to coordinate to the vast amount of medical and psychological data around the globe and to communicate with researchers world-wide, it enhances innovative possibilities for research, diagnosis and therapy. Currently, the World Wide Web is regarded as the most user-friendly and practical of all the internet resources. Based on a systematic introduction to the applications of the WWW, this article discusses relevant resources, points out possibilities and limits of network-supported scientific research and proposes many uses of this new medium.

Citalopram and escitalopram plasma drug and metabolite concentrations: genome-wide associations

PubMed Central

Ji, Yuan; Schaid, Daniel J; Desta, Zeruesenay; Kubo, Michiaki; Batzler, Anthony J; Snyder, Karen; Mushiroda, Taisei; Kamatani, Naoyuki; Ogburn, Evan; Hall-Flavin, Daniel; Flockhart, David; Nakamura, Yusuke; Mrazek, David A; Weinshilboum, Richard M

2014-01-01

Aims Citalopram (CT) and escitalopram (S-CT) are among the most widely prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors used to treat major depressive disorder (MDD). We applied a genome-wide association study to identify genetic factors that contribute to variation in plasma concentrations of CT or S-CT and their metabolites in MDD patients treated with CT or S-CT. Methods Our genome-wide association study was performed using samples from 435 MDD patients. Linear mixed models were used to account for within-subject correlations of longitudinal measures of plasma drug/metabolite concentrations (4 and 8 weeks after the initiation of drug therapy), and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were modelled as additive allelic effects. Results Genome-wide significant associations were observed for S-CT concentration with SNPs in or near the CYP2C19 gene on chromosome 10 (rs1074145, P = 4.1 × 10−9) and with S-didesmethylcitalopram concentration for SNPs near the CYP2D6 locus on chromosome 22 (rs1065852, P = 2.0 × 10−16), supporting the important role of these cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes in biotransformation of citalopram. After adjustment for the effect of CYP2C19 functional alleles, the analyses also identified novel loci that will require future replication and functional validation. Conclusions In vitro and in vivo studies have suggested that the biotransformation of CT to monodesmethylcitalopram and didesmethylcitalopram is mediated by CYP isozymes. The results of our genome-wide association study performed in MDD patients treated with CT or S-CT have confirmed those observations but also identified novel genomic loci that might play a role in variation in plasma levels of CT or its metabolites during the treatment of MDD patients with these selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. PMID:24528284

Citalopram and escitalopram plasma drug and metabolite concentrations: genome-wide associations.

PubMed

Ji, Yuan; Schaid, Daniel J; Desta, Zeruesenay; Kubo, Michiaki; Batzler, Anthony J; Snyder, Karen; Mushiroda, Taisei; Kamatani, Naoyuki; Ogburn, Evan; Hall-Flavin, Daniel; Flockhart, David; Nakamura, Yusuke; Mrazek, David A; Weinshilboum, Richard M

2014-08-01

Citalopram (CT) and escitalopram (S-CT) are among the most widely prescribed selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors used to treat major depressive disorder (MDD). We applied a genome-wide association study to identify genetic factors that contribute to variation in plasma concentrations of CT or S-CT and their metabolites in MDD patients treated with CT or S-CT. Our genome-wide association study was performed using samples from 435 MDD patients. Linear mixed models were used to account for within-subject correlations of longitudinal measures of plasma drug/metabolite concentrations (4 and 8 weeks after the initiation of drug therapy), and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were modelled as additive allelic effects. Genome-wide significant associations were observed for S-CT concentration with SNPs in or near the CYP2C19 gene on chromosome 10 (rs1074145, P = 4.1 × 10(-9) ) and with S-didesmethylcitalopram concentration for SNPs near the CYP2D6 locus on chromosome 22 (rs1065852, P = 2.0 × 10(-16) ), supporting the important role of these cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes in biotransformation of citalopram. After adjustment for the effect of CYP2C19 functional alleles, the analyses also identified novel loci that will require future replication and functional validation. In vitro and in vivo studies have suggested that the biotransformation of CT to monodesmethylcitalopram and didesmethylcitalopram is mediated by CYP isozymes. The results of our genome-wide association study performed in MDD patients treated with CT or S-CT have confirmed those observations but also identified novel genomic loci that might play a role in variation in plasma levels of CT or its metabolites during the treatment of MDD patients with these selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. © 2014 The British Pharmacological Society.

Multi-dimensional effects of color on the world wide web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Morton, Jill

2002-06-01

Color is the most powerful building material of visual imagery on the World Wide Web. It must function successfully as it has done historically in traditional two-dimensional media, as well as address new challenges presented by this electronic medium. The psychological, physiological, technical and aesthetic effects of color have been redefined by the unique requirements of the electronic transmission of text and images on the Web. Color simultaneously addresses each of these dimensions in this electronic medium.

Regional Neural Response Differences in the Determination of Faces or Houses Positioned in a Wide Visual Field

PubMed Central

Wu, Jinglong; Chen, Kewei; Imajyo, Satoshi; Ohno, Seiichiro; Kanazawa, Susumu

2013-01-01

In human visual cortex, the primary visual cortex (V1) is considered to be essential for visual information processing; the fusiform face area (FFA) and parahippocampal place area (PPA) are considered as face-selective region and places-selective region, respectively. Recently, a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study showed that the neural activity ratios between V1 and FFA were constant as eccentricities increasing in central visual field. However, in wide visual field, the neural activity relationships between V1 and FFA or V1 and PPA are still unclear. In this work, using fMRI and wide-view present system, we tried to address this issue by measuring neural activities in V1, FFA and PPA for the images of faces and houses aligning in 4 eccentricities and 4 meridians. Then, we further calculated ratio relative to V1 (RRV1) as comparing the neural responses amplitudes in FFA or PPA with those in V1. We found V1, FFA, and PPA showed significant different neural activities to faces and houses in 3 dimensions of eccentricity, meridian, and region. Most importantly, the RRV1s in FFA and PPA also exhibited significant differences in 3 dimensions. In the dimension of eccentricity, both FFA and PPA showed smaller RRV1s at central position than those at peripheral positions. In meridian dimension, both FFA and PPA showed larger RRV1s at upper vertical positions than those at lower vertical positions. In the dimension of region, FFA had larger RRV1s than PPA. We proposed that these differential RRV1s indicated FFA and PPA might have different processing strategies for encoding the wide field visual information from V1. These different processing strategies might depend on the retinal position at which faces or houses are typically observed in daily life. We posited a role of experience in shaping the information processing strategies in the ventral visual cortex. PMID:23991147

Crystallography Open Databases and Preservation: a World-wide Initiative

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Chateigner, Daniel

In 2003, an international team of crystallographers proposed the Crystallography Open Database (COD), a fully-free collection of crystal structure data, in the aim of ensuring their preservation. With nearly 250000 entries, this database represents a large open set of data for crystallographers, academics and industrials, located at five different places world-wide, and included in Thomson-Reuters’ ISI. As a large step towards data preservation, raw data can now be uploaded along with «digested» structure files, and COD can be questioned by most of the crystallography-linked industrial software. The COD initiative work deserves several other open developments.

A Benchmark and Comparative Study of Video-Based Face Recognition on COX Face Database.

PubMed

Huang, Zhiwu; Shan, Shiguang; Wang, Ruiping; Zhang, Haihong; Lao, Shihong; Kuerban, Alifu; Chen, Xilin

2015-12-01

Face recognition with still face images has been widely studied, while the research on video-based face recognition is inadequate relatively, especially in terms of benchmark datasets and comparisons. Real-world video-based face recognition applications require techniques for three distinct scenarios: 1) Videoto-Still (V2S); 2) Still-to-Video (S2V); and 3) Video-to-Video (V2V), respectively, taking video or still image as query or target. To the best of our knowledge, few datasets and evaluation protocols have benchmarked for all the three scenarios. In order to facilitate the study of this specific topic, this paper contributes a benchmarking and comparative study based on a newly collected still/video face database, named COX(1) Face DB. Specifically, we make three contributions. First, we collect and release a largescale still/video face database to simulate video surveillance with three different video-based face recognition scenarios (i.e., V2S, S2V, and V2V). Second, for benchmarking the three scenarios designed on our database, we review and experimentally compare a number of existing set-based methods. Third, we further propose a novel Point-to-Set Correlation Learning (PSCL) method, and experimentally show that it can be used as a promising baseline method for V2S/S2V face recognition on COX Face DB. Extensive experimental results clearly demonstrate that video-based face recognition needs more efforts, and our COX Face DB is a good benchmark database for evaluation.

Distribution of medical research articles on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Kavanagh, Kevin T

2003-01-01

Ninety-eight percent of 51 polled medical editors felt that published research articles should be available to the public on the World Wide Web at no charge, after a mean time from publication of 1.4 years for viewing and 1.9 years for printing. Public libraries or other government institutions could be allowed to assume the responsibility of housing and distributing the electronically stored archived material, analogous to their role with printed material, lifting the financial burden from the publishing companies.

Search Engines: A Primer on Finding Information on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Maddux, Cleborne

1996-01-01

Presents an annotated list of several World Wide Web search engines, including Yahoo, Infoseek, Alta Vista, Magellan, Lycos, Webcrawler, Excite, Deja News, and the LISZT Directory of discussion groups. Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) are included. Discussion assesses performance and describes rules and syntax for refining or limiting a search.…

In-World Behaviors and Learning in a Virtual World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nadolny, Larysa; Childs, Mark

2014-01-01

Educational virtual worlds can give students opportunities that would not otherwise be possible in face-to-face settings. The SciEthics Interactive simulations allow learners to conduct scientific research and practice ethical decision-making within a virtual world. This study examined the in-world behaviors that identify students who perceive…

The World Wide Web and Higher Education: The Promise of Virtual Universities and Online Libraries.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barnard, John

1997-01-01

While many universities and colleges are emphasizing distance education as a way to reach working adults and control costs associated with maintaining campus infrastructures, the World Wide Web is beginning to provide a medium for offering courses to students anywhere in the world. Discusses virtual universities which combine the Web with other…

An Exploration of the World Wide Web: Art Images and Visual Literacy.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robinson, Rhonda S.; Koos, Marybeth

The introduction of affordable multimedia computers with CD-ROM capacity, videocassette recorders, and connections to the Internet and the World Wide Web have expanded opportunities to help society develop visual literacy. Art images are a natural choice for the teaching of visual literacy. At Northern Illinois University, a course was added in…

Live Specimens More Effective than World Wide Web for Learning Plant Material

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taraban, Roman; McKenney, Cynthia; Peffley, Ellen; Applegarth, Ashley

2004-01-01

The World Wide Web and other computer-based media are new teaching resources for plant identification. The purpose of the experiments reported here was to test whether learning plant identification for woody and herbaceous plant material over the web was as effective, more effective, or preferred by undergraduate students when compared with…

The World Wide Web and Technology Transfer at NASA Langley Research Center

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nelson, Michael L.; Bianco, David J.

1994-01-01

NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) began using the World Wide Web (WWW) in the summer of 1993, becoming the first NASA installation to provide a Center-wide home page. This coincided with a reorganization of LaRC to provide a more concentrated focus on technology transfer to both aerospace and non-aerospace industry. Use of the WWW and NCSA Mosaic not only provides automated information dissemination, but also allows for the implementation, evolution and integration of many technology transfer applications. This paper describes several of these innovative applications, including the on-line presentation of the entire Technology Opportunities Showcase (TOPS), an industrial partnering showcase that exists on the Web long after the actual 3-day event ended. During its first year on the Web, LaRC also developed several WWW-based information repositories. The Langley Technical Report Server (LTRS), a technical paper delivery system with integrated searching and retrieval, has proved to be quite popular. The NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS), an outgrowth of LTRS, provides uniform access to many logically similar, yet physically distributed NASA report servers. WWW is also the foundation of the Langley Software Server (LSS), an experimental software distribution system which will distribute LaRC-developed software with the possible phase-out of NASA's COSMIC program. In addition to the more formal technology distribution projects, WWW has been successful in connecting people with technologies and people with other people. With the completion of the LaRC reorganization, the Technology Applications Group, charged with interfacing with non-aerospace companies, opened for business with a popular home page.

Insights learned from teaching pathophysiology on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Yucha, C; Princen, T

2000-02-01

This article describes a one-credit, graduate level pathophysiology module taught using the World Wide Web. Student outcomes are compared to those of students who took the same module in a traditional classroom setting. Although the majority of the graduate students were not Web literate, they became more comfortable with this instructional medium over time. A comparison of the Web-based instruction with the traditional format, both directed by the same instructor, showed no significant differences in student performance on a multiple choice examination.

Journals Online News: Dispersing Collection Management Information on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Langley, Anne; And Others

Journals Online News (JON) is a World Wide Web site created and maintained by the Collection Development Team at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) Libraries in order to speak with the UTK community about journals-related issues. Its primary function at present is to provide UTK faculty and other interested parties with the latest…

Increasing efficiency of information dissemination and collection through the World Wide Web

Treesearch

Daniel P. Huebner; Malchus B. Baker; Peter F. Ffolliott

2000-01-01

Researchers, managers, and educators have access to revolutionary technology for information transfer through the World Wide Web (Web). Using the Web to effectively gather and distribute information is addressed in this paper. Tools, tips, and strategies are discussed. Companion Web sites are provided to guide users in selecting the most appropriate tool for searching...

World Wide Web Indexes and Hierarchical Lists: Finding Tools for the Internet.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Munson, Kurt I.

1996-01-01

In World Wide Web indexing: (1) the creation process is automated; (2) the indexes are merely descriptive, not analytical of document content; (3) results may be sorted differently depending on the search engine; and (4) indexes link directly to the resources. This article compares the indexing methods and querying options of the search engines…

Leading School-Wide Improvement in Low-Performing Schools Facing Conditions of Accountability: Key Actions and Considerations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cosner, Shelby; Jones, Mary F.

2016-01-01

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to advance a framework that identifies three key domains of work and a set of more nuanced considerations and actions within each domain for school leaders seeking to improve school-wide student learning in low-performing schools facing conditions of accountability. Design/methodology/approach: Review of…

HotJava: Sun's Animated Interactive World Wide Web Browser for the Internet.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Machovec, George S., Ed.

1995-01-01

Examines HotJava and Java, World Wide Web technology for use on the Internet. HotJava, an interactive, animated Web browser, based on the object-oriented Java programming language, is different from HTML-based browsers such as Netscape. Its client/server design does not understand Internet protocols but can dynamically find what it needs to know.…

The semantic architecture of the World-Wide Molecular Matrix (WWMM)

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

The World-Wide Molecular Matrix (WWMM) is a ten year project to create a peer-to-peer (P2P) system for the publication and collection of chemical objects, including over 250, 000 molecules. It has now been instantiated in a number of repositories which include data encoded in Chemical Markup Language (CML) and linked by URIs and RDF. The technical specification and implementation is now complete. We discuss the types of architecture required to implement nodes in the WWMM and consider the social issues involved in adoption. PMID:21999475

The semantic architecture of the World-Wide Molecular Matrix (WWMM).

PubMed

Murray-Rust, Peter; Adams, Sam E; Downing, Jim; Townsend, Joe A; Zhang, Yong

2011-10-14

The World-Wide Molecular Matrix (WWMM) is a ten year project to create a peer-to-peer (P2P) system for the publication and collection of chemical objects, including over 250, 000 molecules. It has now been instantiated in a number of repositories which include data encoded in Chemical Markup Language (CML) and linked by URIs and RDF. The technical specification and implementation is now complete. We discuss the types of architecture required to implement nodes in the WWMM and consider the social issues involved in adoption.

Ethical and social issues facing obstetricians in low-income countries.

PubMed

Ogwuegbu, Chigbu Chibuike; Eze, Onah Hyacinth

2009-06-01

A review of publications on ethical and social issues from low-income countries was done with the aim of highlighting the major ethical and social issues facing obstetricians in these countries. Low-income countries were identified using the World Health Organization income group classification of member nations. Obstetricians in low-income countries face a wide range of special social and ethical issues that reflect the peculiarities of their practice environment characterized by poverty, low education, deep attachment to tradition and culture, low social status of women, and high levels of physician's paternalism.

Singapore National Medical Image Resource Centre (SN.MIRC): a world wide web resource for radiology education.

PubMed

Yang, Guo-Liang; Lim, C C Tchoyoson

2006-08-01

Radiology education is heavily dependent on visual images, and case-based teaching files comprising medical images can be an important tool for teaching diagnostic radiology. Currently, hardcopy film is being rapidly replaced by digital radiological images in teaching hospitals, and an electronic teaching file (ETF) library would be desirable. Furthermore, a repository of ETFs deployed on the World Wide Web has the potential for e-learning applications to benefit a larger community of learners. In this paper, we describe a Singapore National Medical Image Resource Centre (SN.MIRC) that can serve as a World Wide Web resource for teaching diagnostic radiology. On SN.MIRC, ETFs can be created using a variety of mechanisms including file upload and online form-filling, and users can search for cases using the Medical Image Resource Center (MIRC) query schema developed by the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). The system can be improved with future enhancements, including multimedia interactive teaching files and distance learning for continuing professional development. However, significant challenges exist when exploring the potential of using the World Wide Web for radiology education.

Alternatives to animal testing: information resources via the Internet and World Wide Web.

PubMed

Hakkinen, P J Bert; Green, Dianne K

2002-04-25

Many countries, including the United States, Canada, European Union member states, and others, require that a comprehensive search for possible alternatives be completed before beginning some or all research involving animals. Completing comprehensive alternatives searches and keeping current with information associated with alternatives to animal testing is a challenge that will be made easier as people throughout the world gain access to the Internet and World Wide Web. Numerous Internet and World Wide Web resources are available to provide guidance and other information on in vitro and other alternatives to animal testing. A comprehensive Web site is Alternatives to Animal Testing on the Web (Altweb), which serves as an online clearinghouse for resources, information, and news about alternatives to animal testing. Examples of other important Web sites include the joint one for the (US) Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) and the National Toxicology Program (NTP) Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM) and the Norwegian Reference Centre for Laboratory Animal Science and Alternatives (The NORINA database). Internet mailing lists and online access to bulletin boards, discussion areas, newsletters, and journals are other ways to access and share information to stay current with alternatives to animal testing.

Survey of patient-oriented total hip replacement information on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Mabrey, J D

2000-12-01

The author conducted an informal survey of materials relating to diseases of the hip and total hip replacement as they appeared on the World Wide Web. The results varied depending on the key words used: hip and replacement yielded 1,818 matches; total hip replacement yielded 1,740 matches; hip replacement yielded 4,565 sites; and hip surgery yielded 1,073 sites. The number of sites for total hip replacement was observed to increase with time, having found an additional 30 sites from an identical search performed only 6 weeks earlier. The nature and quality of these sites varied from well-organized and informative, to personal testaments, to obvious commercial endeavors. Overall, this survey found an abundance of material regarding the hip and hip replacements on the World Wide Web, but orthopaedic societies need to take a more active role in constructing, maintaining, and monitoring these sites to best serve the needs of their patients and their members.

Wood Utilization Research Dissemination on the World Wide Web: A Case Study

Treesearch

Daniel L. Schmoldt; Matthew F. Winn; Philip A. Araman

1997-01-01

Because many research products are informational rather than tangible, emerging information technologies, such as the multi-media format of the World Wide Web, provide an open and easily accessible mechanism for transferring research to user groups. We have found steady, increasing use of our Web site over the first 6-1/2 months of operation; almost one-third of the...

Designing Metaphorically Appropriate Graphics for a PT3 World Wide Web Site.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Henry, Anne; Crawford, Caroline M.

This paper describes the design and development of a World Wide Web site associated with a Preparing Tomorrow's Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) grant that was awarded to the University of Houston at Clear Lake (Texas) by the U.S. Department of Education. The Web site that created the electronic community (e-community) was to meet the needs and…

Light concentrator of the wide field of view Cherenkov telescope

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Rui; Sheng, Xi Yi; Liao, Bo Lin

2016-10-01

The Wide Field of View Cherenkov Telescope (WFCT) is mainly constituted by optical reflector and focal-plane photomultiplier (PMT) array camera. In order to avoid loss of Cherenkov signal resulting from the dead area between circular PMT tubes and invalid fringe of each PMT, the light concentrator used as front window of PMT is considered to improve detective efficiency. Basing on the edge-ray principle and features of WFCT, several light concentrators are designed and simulated with ZEMAX. The result shows that the hollow hexahedral compound parabolic concentrator (hex-CPC) has good performance in collecting light. Moreover, the samples of the hollow hexahedral CPC have been manufactured and tested.

Delivering an Alternative Medicine Resource to the User's Desktop via World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Li, Jie; Wu, Gang; Marks, Ellen; Fan, Weiyu

1998-01-01

Discusses the design and implementation of a World Wide Web-based alternative medicine virtual resource. This homepage integrates regional, national, and international resources and delivers library services to the user's desktop. Goals, structure, and organizational schemes of the system are detailed, and design issues for building such a…

Overview of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) (SIGs IA, USE).

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Daly, Janet

2000-01-01

Provides an overview of a planned session to describe the work of the World Wide Web Consortium, including technical specifications for HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), XML (Extensible Markup Language), CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), and over 20 other Web standards that address graphics, multimedia, privacy, metadata, and other technologies. (LRW)

Histology on the World Wide Web: A Digest of Resources for Students and Teachers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cotter, John R.

1997-01-01

Provides a list of 37 World Wide Web sites that are devoted to instruction in histology and include electronic manuals, syllabi, atlases, image galleries, and quizzes. Reviews the topics, content, and highlights of these Web sites. (DDR)

Application of World Wide Web (W3) Technologies in Payload Operations

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sun, Charles; Windrem, May; Picinich, Lou

1996-01-01

World Wide Web (W3) technologies are considered in relation to their application to space missions. It is considered that such technologies, including the hypertext transfer protocol and the Java object-oriented language, offer a powerful and relatively inexpensive framework for distributed application software development. The suitability of these technologies for payload monitoring systems development is discussed, and the experience gained from the development of an insect habitat monitoring system based on W3 technologies is reported.

WorldWide Telescope: A Newly Open Source Astronomy Visualization System

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Fay, Jonathan; Roberts, Douglas A.

2016-01-01

After eight years of development by Microsoft Research, WorldWide Telescope (WWT) was made an open source project at the end of June 2015. WWT was motivated by the desire to put new surveys of objects, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in the context of the night sky. The development of WWT under Microsoft started with the creation of a Windows desktop client that is widely used in various education, outreach and research projects. Using this, users can explore the data built into WWT as well as data that is loaded in. Beyond exploration, WWT can be used to create tours that present various datasets a narrative format.In the past two years, the team developed a collection of web controls, including an HTML5 web client, which contains much of the functionality of the Windows desktop client. The project under Microsoft has deep connections with several user communities such as education through the WWT Ambassadors program, http://wwtambassadors.org/ and with planetariums and museums such as the Adler Planetarium. WWT can also support research, including using WWT to visualize the Bones of the Milky Way and rich connections between WWT and the Astrophysical Data Systems (ADS, http://labs.adsabs.harvard.edu/adsabs/). One important new research connection is the use of WWT to create dynamic and potentially interactive supplements to journal articles, which have been created in 2015.Now WWT is an open source community lead project. The source code is available in GitHub (https://github.com/WorldWideTelescope). There is significant developer documentation on the website (http://worldwidetelescope.org/Developers/) and an extensive developer workshops (http://wwtworkshops.org/?tribe_events=wwt-developer-workshop) has taken place in the fall of 2015.Now that WWT is open source anyone who has the interest in the project can be a contributor. As important as helping out with coding, the project needs people interested in documentation, testing, training and other roles.

Teaching with the World Wide Web: Internet Resources for Educators in Illinois Schools.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Barker, Bruce O.; Hall, Robert F.

1998-01-01

This report focuses on teaching with the World Wide Web. An introduction describes the Illinois State Board of Education's (ISBE's) efforts in urging local schools to integrate information technology into all aspects of their curriculum and in emphasizing the need for technology-focused staff development for Illinois teachers. ISBE supports…

No Longer Conveyor but Creator: Developing an Epistemology of the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Trombley, Laura E. Skandera; Flanagan, William G.

2001-01-01

Discusses the impact of the World Wide Web in terms of epistemology. Topics include technological innovations, including new dimensions of virtuality; the accessibility of information; tracking Web use via cookies; how the Web transforms the process of learning and knowing; linking information sources; and the Web as an information delivery…

Gender Equity in Advertising on the World-Wide Web: Can it be Found?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kramer, Kevin M.; Knupfer, Nancy Nelson

Recent attention to gender equity in computer environments, as well as in print-based and televised advertising for technological products, suggests that gender bias in the computer environment continues. This study examined gender messages within World Wide Web advertisements, specifically the type and number of visual images used in Web banner…

Finding Information on the World Wide Web: The Retrieval Effectiveness of Search Engines.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pathak, Praveen; Gordon, Michael

1999-01-01

Describes a study that examined the effectiveness of eight search engines for the World Wide Web. Calculated traditional information-retrieval measures of recall and precision at varying numbers of retrieved documents to use as the bases for statistical comparisons of retrieval effectiveness. Also examined the overlap between search engines.…

The poor quality of information about laparoscopy on the World Wide Web as indexed by popular search engines.

PubMed

Allen, J W; Finch, R J; Coleman, M G; Nathanson, L K; O'Rourke, N A; Fielding, G A

2002-01-01

This study was undertaken to determine the quality of information on the Internet regarding laparoscopy. Four popular World Wide Web search engines were used with the key word "laparoscopy." Advertisements, patient- or physician-directed information, and controversial material were noted. A total of 14,030 Web pages were found, but only 104 were unique Web sites. The majority of the sites were duplicate pages, subpages within a main Web page, or dead links. Twenty-eight of the 104 pages had a medical product for sale, 26 were patient-directed, 23 were written by a physician or group of physicians, and six represented corporations. The remaining 21 were "miscellaneous." The 46 pages containing educational material were critically reviewed. At least one of the senior authors found that 32 of the pages contained controversial or misleading statements. All of the three senior authors (LKN, NAO, GAF) independently agreed that 17 of the 46 pages contained controversial information. The World Wide Web is not a reliable source for patient or physician information about laparoscopy. Authenticating medical information on the World Wide Web is a difficult task, and no government or surgical society has taken the lead in regulating what is presented as fact on the World Wide Web.

Teaching Physiology and the World Wide Web: Electrochemistry and Electrophysiology on the Internet.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dwyer, Terry M.; Fleming, John; Randall, James E.; Coleman, Thomas G.

1997-01-01

Presents two examples of laboratory exercises using the World Wide Web for first-year medical students. The first example introduces the physical laws that apply to osmotic, chemical, and electrical gradients and a simulation of the ability of the sodium-potassium pump to establish chemical gradients and maintain cell volume. The second module…

Tapping the Resources of the World Wide Web for Inquiry in Middle Schools.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Windschitl, Mark; Irby, Janet

1999-01-01

Argues for the cautiously expanded use of the World Wide Web for inquiry across the middle school curriculum, noting how the Internet can be used in schools. Describes the Internet and appraises its distractions and academic utility, identifying features that support student inquiry in science, mathematics, social studies, and language arts. (JPB)

Searching and Researching on the Internet and the World Wide Web. Second Edition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ackermann, Ernest; Hartman, Karen

This book presents information specialists--researchers, librarians, and students who work with information--with an accessible approach to finding information on the World Wide Web and the Internet. Each of the chapters contains one or more step-by-step activities to demonstrate fundamental skills and concepts. The book has an accompanying Web…

Radiology teaching file cases on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Scalzetti, E M

1997-08-01

The presentation of a radiographic teaching file on the World Wide Web can be enhanced by attending to principles of web design. Chief among these are appropriate control of page layout, minimization of the time required to download a page from the remote server, and provision for navigation within and among the web pages that constitute the site. Page layout is easily accomplished by the use of tables; column widths can be fixed to maintain an acceptable line length for text. Downloading time is minimized by rigorous editing and by optimal compression of image files; beyond this, techniques like preloading of images and specification of image width and height are also helpful. Navigation controls should be clear, consistent, and readily available.

Wide acceptance angle, high concentration ratio, optical collector

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kruer, Mark Arthur (Inventor)

1990-01-01

The invention is directed to an optical collector requiring a wide acceptance angle, and a high concentration ratio. The invention is particularly adapted for use in solar collectors of cassegrain design. The optical collector system includes a parabolic circular concave primary mirror and a hyperbolic circular convex secondary mirror. The primary mirror includes a circular hole located at its center wherein a solar collector is located. The mirrored surface of the secondary mirror has three distinct zones: a center circle, an on-axis annulus, and an off-axis section. The parabolic shape of the primary mirror is chosen so that the primary mirror reflects light entering the system on-axis onto the on-axis annulus. A substantial amount of light entering the system off-axis is reflected by the primary mirror onto either the off-axis section or onto the center circle. Subsequently, the off-axis sections reflect the off-axis light toward the solar collector. Thus, off-axis light is captured which would otherwise be lost to the system. The novelty of the system appears to lie in the configuration of the primary mirror which focuses off-axis light onto an annular portion of the secondary mirror to enable capture thereof. This feature results in wide acceptance angle and a high concentration ratio, and also compensates for the effects of non-specular reflection, and enables a cassegrain configuration to be used where such characteristics are required.

How Academics Face the World: A Study of 5829 Homepage Pictures

PubMed Central

Churches, Owen; Callahan, Rebecca; Michalski, Dana; Brewer, Nicola; Turner, Emma; Keage, Hannah Amy Diane; Thomas, Nicole Annette; Nicholls, Mike Elmo Richard

2012-01-01

It is now standard practice, at Universities around the world, for academics to place pictures of themselves on a personal profile page maintained as part of their University’s web-site. Here we investigated what these pictures reveal about the way academics see themselves. Since there is an asymmetry in the degree to which emotional information is conveyed by the face, with the left side being more expressive than the right, we hypothesised that academics in the sciences would seek to pose as non-emotional rationalists and put their right cheek forward, while academics in the arts would express their emotionality and pose with the left cheek forward. We sourced 5829 pictures of academics from their University websites and found that, consistent with the hypotheses, there was a significant difference in the direction of face posing between science academics and English academics with English academics showing a more leftward orientation. Academics in the Fine Arts and Performing Arts however, did not show the expected left cheek forward bias. We also analysed profile pictures of psychology academics and found a greater bias toward presenting the left check compared to science academics which makes psychologists appear more like arts academics than scientists. These findings indicate that the personal website pictures of academics mirror the cultural perceptions of emotional expressiveness across disciplines. PMID:22815695

How academics face the world: a study of 5829 homepage pictures.

PubMed

Churches, Owen; Callahan, Rebecca; Michalski, Dana; Brewer, Nicola; Turner, Emma; Keage, Hannah Amy Diane; Thomas, Nicole Annette; Nicholls, Mike Elmo Richard

2012-01-01

It is now standard practice, at Universities around the world, for academics to place pictures of themselves on a personal profile page maintained as part of their University's web-site. Here we investigated what these pictures reveal about the way academics see themselves. Since there is an asymmetry in the degree to which emotional information is conveyed by the face, with the left side being more expressive than the right, we hypothesised that academics in the sciences would seek to pose as non-emotional rationalists and put their right cheek forward, while academics in the arts would express their emotionality and pose with the left cheek forward. We sourced 5829 pictures of academics from their University websites and found that, consistent with the hypotheses, there was a significant difference in the direction of face posing between science academics and English academics with English academics showing a more leftward orientation. Academics in the Fine Arts and Performing Arts however, did not show the expected left cheek forward bias. We also analysed profile pictures of psychology academics and found a greater bias toward presenting the left check compared to science academics which makes psychologists appear more like arts academics than scientists. These findings indicate that the personal website pictures of academics mirror the cultural perceptions of emotional expressiveness across disciplines.

Friends with Faces: How Social Networks Can Enhance Face Recognition and Vice Versa

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mavridis, Nikolaos; Kazmi, Wajahat; Toulis, Panos

The "friendship" relation, a social relation among individuals, is one of the primary relations modeled in some of the world's largest online social networking sites, such as "FaceBook." On the other hand, the "co-occurrence" relation, as a relation among faces appearing in pictures, is one that is easily detectable using modern face detection techniques. These two relations, though appearing in different realms (social vs. visual sensory), have a strong correlation: faces that co-occur in photos often belong to individuals who are friends. Using real-world data gathered from "Facebook," which were gathered as part of the "FaceBots" project, the world's first physical face-recognizing and conversing robot that can utilize and publish information on "Facebook" was established. We present here methods as well as results for utilizing this correlation in both directions. Both algorithms for utilizing knowledge of the social context for faster and better face recognition are given, as well as algorithms for estimating the friendship network of a number of individuals given photos containing their faces. The results are quite encouraging. In the primary example, doubling of the recognition accuracy as well as a sixfold improvement in speed is demonstrated. Various improvements, interesting statistics, as well as an empirical investigation leading to predictions of scalability to much bigger data sets are discussed.

Spiders and Worms and Crawlers, Oh My: Searching on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Eagan, Ann; Bender, Laura

Searching on the world wide web can be confusing. A myriad of search engines exist, often with little or no documentation, and many of these search engines work differently from the standard search engines people are accustomed to using. Intended for librarians, this paper defines search engines, directories, spiders, and robots, and covers basics…

The World Wide Web: A Web Even a Fly Would Love

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bryson, E.

Ever since my introduction to the World Wide Web (WWW), it's been love at first byte. Searching on the WWW is similar to being able to go to a public library and allow yourself to be transported to any other book or library around the world by looking at a reference or index and clicking your heels together like Dorothy did in "The Wizard of Oz", only the clicking is done with a computer mouse. During this presentation, we will explore the WWW protocols which allow clients and servers to communicate on the Internet. We will demonstrate the ease with which users can navigate the virtual tidal wave of information available with a mere click of a button. In addition, the workshop will discuss the revolutionary aspects of this network information system and how it's impacting our libraries as a primary mechanism for rapid dissemination of knowledge.

World Wide Web and Internet: applications for radiologists.

PubMed

Wunderbaldinger, P; Schima, W; Turetschek, K; Helbich, T H; Bankier, A A; Herold, C J

1999-01-01

Global exchange of information is one of the major sources of scientific progress in medicine. For management of the rapidly growing body of medical information, computers and their applications have become an indispensable scientific tool. Approximately 36 million computer users are part of a worldwide network called the Internet or "information highway" and have created a new infrastructure to promote rapid and efficient access to medical, and thus also to radiological, information. With the establishment of the World Wide Web (WWW) by a consortium of computer users who used a standardized, nonproprietary syntax termed HyperText Markup Language (HTML) for composing documents, it has become possible to provide interactive multimedia presentations to a wide audience. The extensive use of images in radiology makes education, worldwide consultation (review) and scientific presentation via the Internet a major beneficiary of this technical development. This is possible, since both information (text) as well as medical images can be transported via the Internet. Presently, the Internet offers an extensive database for radiologists. Since many radiologists and physicians have to be considered "Internet novices" and, hence, cannot yet avail themselves of the broad spectrum of the Internet, the aim of this article is to present a general introduction to the WWW/Internet and its applications for radiologists. All Internet sites mentioned in this article can be found at the following Internet address: http://www.univie.ac. at/radio/radio.html (Department of Radiology, University of Vienna)

Judging nursing information on the world wide web.

PubMed

Cader, Raffik

2013-02-01

The World Wide Web is increasingly becoming an important source of information for healthcare professionals. However, finding reliable information from unauthoritative Web sites to inform healthcare can pose a challenge to nurses. A study, using grounded theory, was undertaken in two phases to understand how qualified nurses judge the quality of Web nursing information. Data were collected using semistructured interviews and focus groups. An explanatory framework that emerged from the data showed that the judgment process involved the application of forms of knowing and modes of cognition to a range of evaluative tasks and depended on the nurses' critical skills, the time available, and the level of Web information cues. This article mainly focuses on the six evaluative tasks relating to assessing user-friendliness, outlook and authority of Web pages, and relationship to nursing practice; appraising the nature of evidence; and applying cross-checking strategies. The implications of these findings to nurse practitioners and publishers of nursing information are significant.

Reading the Writing on the Graffiti Wall: The World Wide Web and Training.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jones, Charles M.

This paper examines the benefits to be derived from networked computer-based instruction (CBI) and discusses the potential of the World Wide Web (WWW) as an effective tool in employee training. Methods of utilizing the WWW as a training tool and communication tool are explored. The discussion is divided into the following sections: (1) "WWW and…

Virtual-Recitation: A World Wide Web Based Approach to Active Learning in Clinical Pharmacokinetics.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Woodward, Donald K.

1998-01-01

Describes implementation, evaluation of World Wide Web-based component in a Rutgers University (New Jersey) advanced clinical pharmacokinetics course. Scheduling accommodated nontraditional students; each week Web pages providing review and supplementary material and an online quiz were posted after class. Comparison with the previous year's…

Uses and Gratifications of the World Wide Web: From Couch Potato to Web Potato.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaye, Barbara K.

1998-01-01

Investigates uses and gratifications of the World Wide Web and its impact on traditional mass media, especially television. Identifies six Web use motivations: entertainment, social interaction, passing of time, escape, information, and Web site preference. Examines relationships between each use motivation and Web affinity, perceived realism, and…

Development of continuing nursing education offerings for the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Billings, D M; Rowles, C J

2001-01-01

Nurses are seeking continuing professional development that is easily accessible, convenient, and available at any time and any place. As nurses have increasing access to Internets and Intranets at home and their workplace, courses for continuing nursing education must be available to meet this need. This article discusses the planning, implementation, and evaluation of continuing nursing education (CNE) on the World Wide Web. The article explains how to develop a strategic plan, develop course offerings, select technology tools to support teaching and learning, and market and evaluate the courses.

Learning Compact Binary Face Descriptor for Face Recognition.

PubMed

Lu, Jiwen; Liong, Venice Erin; Zhou, Xiuzhuang; Zhou, Jie

2015-10-01

Binary feature descriptors such as local binary patterns (LBP) and its variations have been widely used in many face recognition systems due to their excellent robustness and strong discriminative power. However, most existing binary face descriptors are hand-crafted, which require strong prior knowledge to engineer them by hand. In this paper, we propose a compact binary face descriptor (CBFD) feature learning method for face representation and recognition. Given each face image, we first extract pixel difference vectors (PDVs) in local patches by computing the difference between each pixel and its neighboring pixels. Then, we learn a feature mapping to project these pixel difference vectors into low-dimensional binary vectors in an unsupervised manner, where 1) the variance of all binary codes in the training set is maximized, 2) the loss between the original real-valued codes and the learned binary codes is minimized, and 3) binary codes evenly distribute at each learned bin, so that the redundancy information in PDVs is removed and compact binary codes are obtained. Lastly, we cluster and pool these binary codes into a histogram feature as the final representation for each face image. Moreover, we propose a coupled CBFD (C-CBFD) method by reducing the modality gap of heterogeneous faces at the feature level to make our method applicable to heterogeneous face recognition. Extensive experimental results on five widely used face datasets show that our methods outperform state-of-the-art face descriptors.

Quality of information available on the World Wide Web for patients undergoing thyroidectomy: review.

PubMed

Muthukumarasamy, S; Osmani, Z; Sharpe, A; England, R J A

2012-02-01

This study aimed to assess the quality of information available on the World Wide Web for patients undergoing thyroidectomy. The first 50 web-links generated by internet searches using the five most popular search engines and the key word 'thyroidectomy' were evaluated using the Lida website validation instrument (assessing accessibility, usability and reliability) and the Flesch Reading Ease Score. We evaluated 103 of a possible 250 websites. Mean scores (ranges) were: Lida accessibility, 48/63 (27-59); Lida usability, 36/54 (21-50); Lida reliability, 21/51 (4-38); and Flesch Reading Ease, 43.9 (2.6-77.6). The quality of internet health information regarding thyroidectomy is variable. High ranking and popularity are not good indicators of website quality. Overall, none of the websites assessed achieved high Lida scores. In order to prevent the dissemination of inaccurate or commercially motivated information, we recommend independent labelling of medical information available on the World Wide Web.

Criteria used by nurses to evaluate practice-related information on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Cader, Raffik; Campbell, Steve; Watson, Don

2003-01-01

Existing criteria used to evaluate information on the World Wide Web often are not related to nursing, especially in relation to clinical and evidence-based practice. Published criteria have been found orientated to the health-consumer, medicine, or general information. In this study, the process by which nurses evaluate practice-related information and the associated evaluative nursing criteria were investigated using a grounded theory approach. In the first stage of this ongoing investigation, semistructured interviews were used to collect data from UK postregistration nursing students. The findings from this initial study provided indications of the process and the criteria for evaluating information on the World Wide Web. Participating students identified intuition as part of the evaluative process. They identified some criteria similar to existing standards, but critically, with additional criteria that are nursing practice related. Because these new criteria are significant for evaluating nursing information, further refinement of these findings is being undertaken through the next stage of the research program.

Automated generation of a World Wide Web-based data entry and check program for medical applications.

PubMed

Kiuchi, T; Kaihara, S

1997-02-01

The World Wide Web-based form is a promising method for the construction of an on-line data collection system for clinical and epidemiological research. It is, however, laborious to prepare a common gateway interface (CGI) program for each project, which the World Wide Web server needs to handle the submitted data. In medicine, it is even more laborious because the CGI program must check deficits, type, ranges, and logical errors (bad combination of data) of entered data for quality assurance as well as data length and meta-characters of the entered data to enhance the security of the server. We have extended the specification of the hypertext markup language (HTML) form to accommodate information necessary for such data checking and we have developed software named AUTOFORM for this purpose. The software automatically analyzes the extended HTML form and generates the corresponding ordinary HTML form, 'Makefile', and C source of CGI programs. The resultant CGI program checks the entered data through the HTML form, records them in a computer, and returns them to the end-user. AUTOFORM drastically reduces the burden of development of the World Wide Web-based data entry system and allows the CGI programs to be more securely and reliably prepared than had they been written from scratch.

Research and Publication on the World Wide Web: A Fifth Grade Class' Experience.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neal, Nancy L.

The World Wide Web (WWW) has become a major presence on the Internet, and teachers are just beginning to discover many valuable applications the Web can have in their classrooms. This study explored use of WWW as a research and publication tool in a fifth grade class project on the formation of the United States. Students were given instruction in…

The World Wide Web--a new tool for biomedical engineering education.

PubMed

Blanchard, S M

1997-01-01

An ever-increasing variety of materials (text, images, videos, and sound) are available through the World Wide Web (WWW). While textbooks, which are often outdated by the time they are published, are usually limited to black and white text and images, many supplemental materials can be found on the WWW. The WWW also provides many resources for student projects. In BAE 465: Biomedical Engineering Applications, student teams developed WWW-based term projects on biomedical topics, e.g. biomaterials, MRI, and medical ultrasound. After the projects were completed and edited by the instructor, they were placed on-line for world-wide access if permission for this had been granted by the student authors. Projects from three classes have been used to form the basis for an electronic textbook which is available at http:@www.eos.ncsu.edu/bae/research/blanchard /www/465/textbook/. This electronic textbook also includes instructional objectives and sample tests for specific topic areas. Student projects have been linked to the appropriate topic areas within the electronic textbook. Links to relevant sites have been included within the electronic textbook as well as within the individual projects. Students were required to link to images and other materials they wanted to include in their project in order to avoid copyright issues. The drawback to this approach to copyright protection is that addresses can change making links unavailable. In BAE 465 and in BAE 235: Engineering Biology, the WWW has also been used to distribute instructional objectives, the syllabi and class policies, homework problems, and abbreviated lecture notes. This has made maintaining course-related material easier and has reduced the amount of paper used by both the students and the instructor. Goals for the electronic textbook include the addition of instructional simulation programs that can be run from remote sites. In the future, biomedical engineering may be taught in a virtual classroom with

Visual Links in the World-Wide Web: The Uses and Limitations of Image Maps.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cochenour, John J.; And Others

As information delivery systems on the Internet increasingly evolve into World Wide Web browsers, understanding key graphical elements of the browser interface is critical to the design of effective information display and access tools. Image maps are one such element, and this document describes a pilot study that collected, reviewed, and…

WorldWide Telescope in Research and Education

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Goodman, A.; Fay, J.; Muench, A.; Pepe, A.; Udompraseret, P.; Wong, C.

2012-09-01

The WorldWide Telescope computer program, released to researchers and the public as a free resource in 2008 by Microsoft Research, has changed the way the ever-growing Universe of online astronomical data is viewed and understood. The WWT program can be thought of as a scriptable, interactive, richly visual browser of the multi-wavelength Sky as we see it from Earth, and of the Universe as we would travel within it. In its web API format, WWT is being used as a service to display professional research data. In its desktop format, WWT works in concert (thanks to SAMP and other IVOA standards) with more traditional research applications such as ds9, Aladin and TOPCAT. The WWT Ambassadors Program (founded in 2009) recruits and trains astrophysically-literate volunteers (including retirees) who use WWT as a teaching tool in online, classroom, and informal educational settings. Early quantitative studies of WWTA indicate that student experiences with WWT enhance science learning dramatically. Thanks to the wealth of data it can access, and the growing number of services to which it connects, WWT is now a key linking technology in the Seamless Astronomy environment we seek to offer researchers, teachers, and students alike.

How Students Evaluate Information and Sources when Searching the World Wide Web for Information

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Walraven, Amber; Brand-Gruwel, Saskia; Boshuizen, Henny P. A.

2009-01-01

The World Wide Web (WWW) has become the biggest information source for students while solving information problems for school projects. Since anyone can post anything on the WWW, information is often unreliable or incomplete, and it is important to evaluate sources and information before using them. Earlier research has shown that students have…

The effect of face inversion for neurons inside and outside fMRI-defined face-selective cortical regions

PubMed Central

Van Belle, Goedele; Vanduffel, Wim; Rossion, Bruno; Vogels, Rufin

2014-01-01

It is widely believed that face processing in the primate brain occurs in a network of category-selective cortical regions. Combined functional MRI (fMRI)-single-cell recording studies in macaques have identified high concentrations of neurons that respond more to faces than objects within face-selective patches. However, cells with a preference for faces over objects are also found scattered throughout inferior temporal (IT) cortex, raising the question whether face-selective cells inside and outside of the face patches differ functionally. Here, we compare the properties of face-selective cells inside and outside of face-selective patches in the IT cortex by means of an image manipulation that reliably disrupts behavior toward face processing: inversion. We recorded IT neurons from two fMRI-defined face-patches (ML and AL) and a region outside of the face patches (herein labeled OUT) during upright and inverted face stimulation. Overall, turning faces upside down reduced the firing rate of face-selective cells. However, there were differences among the recording regions. First, the reduced neuronal response for inverted faces was independent of stimulus position, relative to fixation, in the face-selective patches (ML and AL) only. Additionally, the effect of inversion for face-selective cells in ML, but not those in AL or OUT, was impervious to whether the neurons were initially searched for using upright or inverted stimuli. Collectively, these results show that face-selective cells differ in their functional characteristics depending on their anatomicofunctional location, suggesting that upright faces are preferably coded by face-selective cells inside but not outside of the fMRI-defined face-selective regions of the posterior IT cortex. PMID:25520434

A framework for the recognition of 3D faces and expressions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Chao; Barreto, Armando

2006-04-01

Face recognition technology has been a focus both in academia and industry for the last couple of years because of its wide potential applications and its importance to meet the security needs of today's world. Most of the systems developed are based on 2D face recognition technology, which uses pictures for data processing. With the development of 3D imaging technology, 3D face recognition emerges as an alternative to overcome the difficulties inherent with 2D face recognition, i.e. sensitivity to illumination conditions and orientation positioning of the subject. But 3D face recognition still needs to tackle the problem of deformation of facial geometry that results from the expression changes of a subject. To deal with this issue, a 3D face recognition framework is proposed in this paper. It is composed of three subsystems: an expression recognition system, a system for the identification of faces with expression, and neutral face recognition system. A system for the recognition of faces with one type of expression (happiness) and neutral faces was implemented and tested on a database of 30 subjects. The results proved the feasibility of this framework.

Differences in neural responses to ipsilateral stimuli in wide-view fields between face- and house-selective areas

PubMed Central

Li, Ting; Niu, Yan; Xiang, Jie; Cheng, Junjie; Liu, Bo; Zhang, Hui; Yan, Tianyi; Kanazawa, Susumu; Wu, Jinglong

2018-01-01

Category-selective brain areas exhibit varying levels of neural activity to ipsilaterally presented stimuli. However, in face- and house-selective areas, the neural responses evoked by ipsilateral stimuli in the peripheral visual field remain unclear. In this study, we displayed face and house images using a wide-view visual presentation system while performing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The face-selective areas (fusiform face area (FFA) and occipital face area (OFA)) exhibited intense neural responses to ipsilaterally presented images, whereas the house-selective areas (parahippocampal place area (PPA) and transverse occipital sulcus (TOS)) exhibited substantially smaller and even negative neural responses to the ipsilaterally presented images. We also found that the category preferences of the contralateral and ipsilateral neural responses were similar. Interestingly, the face- and house-selective areas exhibited neural responses to ipsilateral images that were smaller than the responses to the contralateral images. Multi-voxel pattern analysis (MVPA) was implemented to evaluate the difference between the contralateral and ipsilateral responses. The classification accuracies were much greater than those expected by chance. The classification accuracies in the FFA were smaller than those in the PPA and TOS. The closer eccentricities elicited greater classification accuracies in the PPA and TOS. We propose that these ipsilateral neural responses might be interpreted by interhemispheric communication through intrahemispheric connectivity of white matter connection and interhemispheric connectivity via the corpus callosum and occipital white matter connection. Furthermore, the PPA and TOS likely have weaker interhemispheric communication than the FFA and OFA, particularly in the peripheral visual field. PMID:29451872

In-house access to PACS images and related data through World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mascarini, Christian; Ratib, Osman M.; Trayser, Gerhard; Ligier, Yves; Appel, R. D.

1996-05-01

The development of a hospital wide PACS is in progress at the University Hospital of Geneva and several archive modules are operational since 1992. This PACS is intended for wide distribution of images to clinical wards. As the PACS project and the number of archived images grow rapidly in the hospital, it was necessary to provide an easy, more widely accessible and convenient access to the PACS database for the clinicians in the different wards and clinical units of the hospital. An innovative solution has been developed using tools such as Netscape navigator and NCSA World Wide Web server as an alternative to conventional database query and retrieval software. These tools present the advantages of providing an user interface which is the same independently of the platform being used (Mac, Windows, UNIX, ...), and an easy integration of different types of documents (text, images, ...). A strict access control has been added to this interface. It allows user identification and access rights checking, as defined by the in-house hospital information system, before allowing the navigation through patient data records.

Finding and Evaluating Adult ESL Resources on the World Wide Web. ERIC Q & A.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Florez, MaryAnn Cunningham

One of the challenges often mentioned by users of the World Wide Web is creating and implementing successful searches on topics of interest. This article provides background information about adult English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) resources available on the Web. It describes various search tools, explains how to create search strategies and how…

Possible world-wide middle miocene iridium anomaly and its relationship to periodicity of impacts and extinctions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Asaro, F.; Alvarez, W.; Michel, H. V.; Alvarez, L. W.; Anders, Mark H.; Montanari, A.; Kennett, James P.

1988-01-01

In a study of one million years of Middle Miocene sediment deposition in ODP Hole 689B in the Weddell Sea near Antarctica, a single iridium (Ir) anomaly of 44 (+ or - 10) x 10 to the 12th gram Ir per gram rock (ppt) was observed in core 6H, section 3, 50 to 60 cm, after background contributions associated with manganese precipitates and clay are subtracted. The ODP Hole 689B is 10,000 km away from another site, DSDP Hole 588B in the Tasman Sea north of New Zealand, where a single Ir anomaly of 144 + or - 7 ppt over a background of 11 ppt was found in an earlier study of 3 million years of deposition. From chemical measurements the latter deposition was thought to be impact-related. Ir measurements were made, following neutron activation, with the Iridium Coincidence Spectrometer. The age vs depth calibration curves given in the DSDP and ODP preliminary reports indicate the ages of the Iranomalies are identical, 11.7 million years, but the absolute and relative uncertainties in the curves are not known. Based on the newest age data the age estimate is 10 million years. As the Ir was deposited at the two sites at about the same time and they are one quarter of the way around the world from each other it seems likely that the deposition was world-wide. The impact of a large asteroid or comet could produce the wide distribution, and this data is supportive of the impact relationship deduced for Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) 588B from the chemical evidence. If the surface densities of Ir at the two sites are representative of the world-wide average, the diameter of a Cl type asteroid containing the necessary Ir would be 3 + or - 1 km, which is large enough to cause world-wide darkness and hence extinctions although the latter point is disputed.

Securing the anonymity of content providers in the World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Demuth, Thomas; Rieke, Andreas

1999-04-01

Nowadays the World Wide Web (WWW) is an established service used by people all over the world. Most of them do not recognize the fact that they reveal plenty of information about themselves or their affiliation and computer equipment to the providers of web pages they connect to. As a result, a lot of services offer users to access web pages unrecognized or without risk of being backtracked, respectively. This kind of anonymity is called user or client anonymity. But on the other hand, an equivalent protection for content providers does not exist, although this feature is desirable for many situations in which the identity of a publisher or content provider shall be hidden. We call this property server anonymity. We will introduce the first system with the primary target to offer anonymity for providers of information in the WWW. Beside this property, it provides also client anonymity. Based on David Chaum's idea of mixes and in relation to the context of the WWW, we explain the term 'server anonymity' motivating the system JANUS which offers both client and server anonymity.

World wide web implementation of the Langley technical report server

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Nelson, Michael L.; Gottlich, Gretchen L.; Bianco, David J.

1994-01-01

On January 14, 1993, NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) made approximately 130 formal, 'unclassified, unlimited' technical reports available via the anonymous FTP Langley Technical Report Server (LTRS). LaRC was the first organization to provide a significant number of aerospace technical reports for open electronic dissemination. LTRS has been successful in its first 18 months of operation, with over 11,000 reports distributed and has helped lay the foundation for electronic document distribution for NASA. The availability of World Wide Web (WWW) technology has revolutionized the Internet-based information community. This paper describes the transition of LTRS from a centralized FTP site to a distributed data model using the WWW, and suggests how the general model for LTRS can be applied to other similar systems.

Navigational Structure on the World Wide Web: Usability Concerns, User Preferences, and "Browsing Behavior."

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frick, Theodore; Monson, John A.; Xaver, Richard F.; Kilic, Gulsen; Conley, Aaron T.; Wamey, Beatrice

There are several approaches a World Wide Web site designer considers in developing a menu structure. One consideration is the content of the menus (what choices are available to the user). Another consideration is the physical layout of the menu structure. The physical layout of a menu may be described as being one of at least three different…

A World Wide Web Human Dimensions Framework and Database for Wildlife and Forest Planning

Treesearch

Michael A. Tarrant; Alan D. Bright; H. Ken Cordell

1999-01-01

The paper describes a human dimensions framework(HDF) for application in wildlife and forest planning. The HDF is delivered via the world wide web and retrieves data on-line from the Social, Economic, Environmental, Leisure, and Attitudes (SEELA) database. The proposed HDF is guided by ten fundamental HD principles, and is applied to wildlife and forest planning using...

An Image Retrieval and Processing Expert System for the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Rodriguez, Ricardo; Rondon, Angelica; Bruno, Maria I.; Vasquez, Ramon

1998-01-01

This paper presents a system that is being developed in the Laboratory of Applied Remote Sensing and Image Processing at the University of P.R. at Mayaguez. It describes the components that constitute its architecture. The main elements are: a Data Warehouse, an Image Processing Engine, and an Expert System. Together, they provide a complete solution to researchers from different fields that make use of images in their investigations. Also, since it is available to the World Wide Web, it provides remote access and processing of images.

Global Digital Revolution and Africa: Transforming Nigerian Universities to World Class Institutions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Isah, Emmanuel Aileonokhuoya; Ayeni, A. O.

2010-01-01

This study examined the global digital revolution and the transformation of Nigerian universities. The study overviewed university developments world wide in line with what obtains in Nigeria. The study highlighted the several challenges that face Nigerian universities inclusive of poor funding, poor personnel and the poor exposure to global…

Geomorphology and the World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Shroder, John F.; Bishop, Michael P.; Olsenholler, Jeffrey; Craiger, J. Philip

2002-10-01

The Internet and the World Wide Web have brought many dimensions of new technology to education and research in geomorphology. As with other disciplines on the Web, Web-based geomorphology has become an eclectic mix of whatever material an individual deems worthy of presentation, and in many cases is without quality control. Nevertheless, new electronic media can facilitate education and research in geomorphology. For example, virtual field trips can be developed and accessed to reinforce concepts in class. Techniques for evaluating Internet references helps students to write traditional term papers, but professional presentations can also involve student papers that are published on the Web. Faculty can also address plagiarism issues by using search engines. Because of the lack of peer review of much of the content on the Web, care must be exercised in using it for reference searches. Today, however, refereed journals are going online and can be accessed through subscription or payment per article viewed. Library reference desks regularly use the Web for searches of refereed articles. Research on the Web ranges from communication between investigators, data acquisition, scientific visualization, or comprehensive searches of refereed sources, to interactive analyses of remote data sets. The Nanga Parbat and the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space (GLIMS) Projects are two examples of geomorphologic research that are achieving full potential through use of the Web. Teaching and research in geomorphology are undergoing a beneficial, but sometimes problematic, transition with the new technology. The learning curve is steep for some users but the view from the top is bright. Geomorphology can only prosper from the benefits offered by computer technologies.

Torque Splitting by a Concentric Face Gear Transmission

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Filler, Robert R.; Heath, Gregory F.; Slaughter, Stephen C.; Lewicki, David G.

2002-01-01

Tests of a 167 Kilowatt (224 Horsepower) split torque face gearbox were performed by the Boeing Company in Mesa, Arizona, while working under a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Technology Reinvestment Program (TRP). This paper provides a summary of these cooperative tests, which were jointly funded by Boeing and DARPA. Design, manufacture and testing of the scaled-power TRP proof-of-concept (POC) split torque gearbox followed preliminary evaluations of the concept performed early in the program. The split torque tests were run using 200 N-m (1767 in-lbs) torque input to each side of the transmission. During tests, two input pinions were slow rolled while in mesh with the two face gears. Two idler gears were also used in the configuration to recombine torque near the output. Resistance was applied at the output face gear to create the required loading conditions in the gear teeth. A system of weights, pulleys and cables were used in the test rig to provide both the input and output loading. Strain gages applied in the tooth root fillets provided strain indication used to determine torque splitting conditions at the input pinions. The final two pinion-two idler tests indicated 52% to 48% average torque split capabilities for the two pinions. During the same tests, a 57% to 43% average distribution of the torque being recombined to the upper face gear from the lower face gear was measured between the two idlers. The POC split torque tests demonstrated that face gears can be applied effectively in split torque rotorcraft transmissions, yielding good potential for significant weight, cost and reliability improvements over existing equipment using spiral bevel gearing.

World-wide architecture of osteoporosis research: density-equalizing mapping studies and gender analysis.

PubMed

Brüggmann, D; Mäule, L-S; Klingelhöfer, D; Schöffel, N; Gerber, A; Jaque, J M; Groneberg, D A

2016-10-01

While research activities on osteoporosis grow constantly, no concise description of the global research architecture exists. Hence, we aim to analyze and depict the world-wide scientific output on osteoporosis combining bibliometric tools, density-equalizing mapping projections and gender analysis. Using the NewQIS platform, we analyzed all osteoporosis-related publications authored from 1900 to 2012 and indexed by the Web of Science. Bibliometric details were analyzed related to quantitative and semi-qualitative aspects. The majority of 57 453 identified publications were original research articles. The USA and Western Europe dominated the field regarding cooperation activity, publication and citation performance. Asia, Africa and South America played a minimal role. Gender analysis revealed a dominance of male scientists in almost all countries except Brazil. Although the scientific performance on osteoporosis is increasing world-wide, a significant disparity in terms of research output was visible between developed and low-income countries. This finding is particularly concerning since epidemiologic evaluations of future osteoporosis prevalences predict enormous challenges for the health-care systems in low-resource countries. Hence, our study underscores the need to address these disparities by fostering future research endeavors in these nations with the aim to successfully prevent a growing global burden related to osteoporosis.

The World Wide Web as a Medium of Instruction: What Works and What Doesn't

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McCarthy, Marianne; Grabowski, Barbara; Hernandez, Angel; Koszalka, Tiffany; Duke, Lee

1997-01-01

A conference was held on March 18-20, 1997 to investigate the lessons learned by the Aeronautics Cooperative Agreement Projects with regard to the most effective strategies for developing instruction for the World Wide Web. The conference was a collaboration among the NASA Aeronautics and Space Transportation Technology Centers (Ames, Dryden, Langley, and Lewis), NASA Headquarters, the University of Idaho and The Pennsylvania State University. The conference consisted of presentations by the Aeronautics Cooperative Agreement Teams, the University of Idaho, and working sessions in which the participants addressed teacher training and support, technology, evaluation and pedagogy. The conference was also undertaken as part of the Dryden Learning Technologies Project which is a collaboration between the Dryden Education Office and The Pennsylvania State University. The DFRC Learning Technology Project goals relevant to the conference are as follows: conducting an analysis of current teacher needs, classroom infrastructure and exemplary instructional World Wide Web sites, and developing models for Web-enhanced learning environments that optimize teaching practices and student learning.

SPACE: Vision and Reality: Face to Face. Proceedings Report

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

1995-01-01

The proceedings of the 11th National Space Symposium entitled 'Vision and Reality: Face to Face' is presented. Technological areas discussed include the following sections: Vision for the future; Positioning for the future; Remote sensing, the emerging era; space opportunities, Competitive vision with acquisition reality; National security requirements in space; The world is into space; and The outlook for space. An appendice is also attached.

Implementation of a World Wide Web server for the oil and gas industry

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Blaylock, R.E.; Martin, F.D.; Emery, R.

1996-10-01

The Gas and Oil Technology Exchange and Communication Highway (GO-TECH) provides an electronic information system for the petroleum community for exchanging ideas, data, and technology. The PC-based system fosters communication and discussion by linking the oil and gas producers with resource centers, government agencies, consulting firms, service companies, national laboratories, academic research groups, and universities throughout the world. The oil and gas producers can access the GO-TECH World Wide Web (WWW) home page through modem links, as well as through the Internet. Future GO-TECH applications will include the establishment of virtual corporations consisting of consortia of small companies, consultants, andmore » service companies linked by electronic information systems. These virtual corporations will have the resources and expertise previously found only in major corporations.« less

Journal of Air Transportation World Wide, Volume 3, No. 1. Volume 3

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bowen, Brent D. (Editor)

1998-01-01

The Journal of Air Transportation World Wide's (JATWW) mission is to provide the global community immediate key resource information in all areas of air transportation. Our goal is to be recognized as the preeminent scholarly journal in the aeronautical aspects of transportation. As an international and interdisciplinary journal, the JATWW will provide a forum for peer-reviewed articles in all areas of aviation and space transportation research, policy, theory, case study, practice, and issues. While maintaining a broad scope, a focal point of the journal will be in the area of aviation administration and policy.

The Culture-Transmission Motive in Immigrants: A World-Wide Internet Survey.

PubMed

Mchitarjan, Irina; Reisenzein, Rainer

2015-01-01

A world-wide internet survey was conducted to test central assumptions of a recent theory of cultural transmission in minorities proposed by the authors. 844 1st to 2nd generation immigrants from a wide variety of countries recruited on a microjob platform completed a questionnaire designed to test eight hypotheses derived from the theory. Support was obtained for all hypotheses. In particular, evidence was obtained for the continued presence, in the immigrants, of the culture-transmission motive postulated by the theory: the desire to maintain the culture of origin and transmit it to the next generation. Support was also obtained for the hypothesized anchoring of the culture-transmission motive in more basic motives fulfilled by cultural groups, the relative intra- and intergenerational stability of the culture-transmission motive, and its motivating effects for action tendencies and desires that support cultural transmission under the difficult conditions of migration. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the assumption that people have a culture-transmission motive belongs to the folk psychology of sociocultural groups, and that immigrants regard the fulfillment of this desire as a moral right.

Educational use of World Wide Web pages on CD-ROM.

PubMed

Engel, Thomas P; Smith, Michael

2002-01-01

The World Wide Web is increasingly important for medical education. Internet served pages may also be used on a local hard disk or CD-ROM without a network or server. This allows authors to reuse existing content and provide access to users without a network connection. CD-ROM offers several advantages over network delivery of Web pages for several applications. However, creating Web pages for CD-ROM requires careful planning. Issues include file names, relative links, directory names, default pages, server created content, image maps, other file types and embedded programming. With care, it is possible to create server based pages that can be copied directly to CD-ROM. In addition, Web pages on CD-ROM may reference Internet served pages to provide the best features of both methods.

Geological problems in radioactive waste isolation - A world wide review

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Witherspoon, P.A.

1991-06-01

The problem of isolating radioactive wastes from the biosphere presents specialists in the earth sciences with some of the most complicated problems they have ever encountered. This is especially true for high-level waste (HLW), which must be isolated in the underground and away from the biosphere for thousands of years. The most widely accepted method of doing this is to seal the radioactive materials in metal canisters that are enclosed by a protective sheath and placed underground in a repository that has been carefully constructed in an appropriate rock formation. Much new technology is being developed to solve the problemsmore » that have been raised, and there is a continuing need to publish the results of new developments for the benefit of all concerned. Table 1 presents a summary of the various formations under investigation according to the reports submitted for this world wide review. It can be seen that in those countries that are searching for repository sites, granitic and metamorphic rocks are the prevalent rock type under investigation. Six countries have developed underground research facilities that are currently in use. All of these investigations are in saturated systems below the water table, except the United States project, which is in the unsaturated zone of a fractured tuff.« less

A causal relationship between face-patch activity and face-detection behavior.

PubMed

Sadagopan, Srivatsun; Zarco, Wilbert; Freiwald, Winrich A

2017-04-04

The primate brain contains distinct areas densely populated by face-selective neurons. One of these, face-patch ML, contains neurons selective for contrast relationships between face parts. Such contrast-relationships can serve as powerful heuristics for face detection. However, it is unknown whether neurons with such selectivity actually support face-detection behavior. Here, we devised a naturalistic face-detection task and combined it with fMRI-guided pharmacological inactivation of ML to test whether ML is of critical importance for real-world face detection. We found that inactivation of ML impairs face detection. The effect was anatomically specific, as inactivation of areas outside ML did not affect face detection, and it was categorically specific, as inactivation of ML impaired face detection while sparing body and object detection. These results establish that ML function is crucial for detection of faces in natural scenes, performing a critical first step on which other face processing operations can build.

Quality analysis of patient information about knee arthroscopy on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Sambandam, Senthil Nathan; Ramasamy, Vijayaraj; Priyanka, Priyanka; Ilango, Balakrishnan

2007-05-01

This study was designed to ascertain the quality of patient information available on the World Wide Web on the topic of knee arthroscopy. For the purpose of quality analysis, we used a pool of 232 search results obtained from 7 different search engines. We used a modified assessment questionnaire to assess the quality of these Web sites. This questionnaire was developed based on similar studies evaluating Web site quality and includes items on illustrations, accessibility, availability, accountability, and content of the Web site. We also compared results obtained with different search engines and tried to establish the best possible search strategy to attain the most relevant, authentic, and adequate information with minimum time consumption. For this purpose, we first compared 100 search results from the single most commonly used search engine (AltaVista) with the pooled sample containing 20 search results from each of the 7 different search engines. The search engines used were metasearch (Copernic and Mamma), general search (Google, AltaVista, and Yahoo), and health topic-related search engines (MedHunt and Healthfinder). The phrase "knee arthroscopy" was used as the search terminology. Excluding the repetitions, there were 117 Web sites available for quality analysis. These sites were analyzed for accessibility, relevance, authenticity, adequacy, and accountability by use of a specially designed questionnaire. Our analysis showed that most of the sites providing patient information on knee arthroscopy contained outdated information, were inadequate, and were not accountable. Only 16 sites were found to be providing reasonably good patient information and hence can be recommended to patients. Understandably, most of these sites were from nonprofit organizations and educational institutions. Furthermore, our study revealed that using multiple search engines increases patients' chances of obtaining more relevant information rather than using a single search

World-wide association of timberline forest advance with microsite type along a precipitation gradient

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Johnson, A. C.; Yeakley, A.

2009-12-01

Timberline forest advance associated with global climate change is occurring worldwide and is often associated with microsites. Microsites, controlled by topography, substrates, and plant cover, are localized regions dictating temperature, moisture, and solar radiation. These abiotic factors are integral to seedling survival. From a compilation of world-wide information on seedling regeneration on microsites at timberline, including our on-going research in the Pacific Northwest, we classified available literature into four microsite categories, related microsite category to annual precipitation, and used analysis of variance to detect statistical differences in microsite type and associated precipitation. We found statistical differences (p = 0.022) indicating the usefulness of understanding microsite/precipitation associations in detecting world-wide trends in timberline expansion. For example, wetter timberlines with downed wood, had regeneration associated with nurse logs, whereas on windy, drier landscapes, regeneration was typically associated with either leeward sides of tree clumps or on microsites protected from frost by overstory canopy. In our study of timberline expansion in the Pacific Northwest, we expect that such knowledge of microsite types associated with forest expansion will reveal a better understanding of mechanisms and rates of timberline forest advance during global warming.

Implementation of a World Wide Web server for the oil and gas industry

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Blaylock, R.E.; Martin, F.D.; Emery, R.

1995-12-31

The Gas and Oil Technology Exchange and Communication Highway, (GO-TECH), provides an electronic information system for the petroleum community for the purpose of exchanging ideas, data, and technology. The personal computer-based system fosters communication and discussion by linking oil and gas producers with resource centers, government agencies, consulting firms, service companies, national laboratories, academic research groups, and universities throughout the world. The oil and gas producers are provided access to the GO-TECH World Wide Web home page via modem links, as well as Internet. The future GO-TECH applications will include the establishment of{open_quote}Virtual corporations {close_quotes} consisting of consortiums of smallmore » companies, consultants, and service companies linked by electronic information systems. These virtual corporations will have the resources and expertise previously found only in major corporations.« less

The many faces of research on face perception.

PubMed

Little, Anthony C; Jones, Benedict C; DeBruine, Lisa M

2011-06-12

Face perception is fundamental to human social interaction. Many different types of important information are visible in faces and the processes and mechanisms involved in extracting this information are complex and can be highly specialized. The importance of faces has long been recognized by a wide range of scientists. Importantly, the range of perspectives and techniques that this breadth has brought to face perception research has, in recent years, led to many important advances in our understanding of face processing. The articles in this issue on face perception each review a particular arena of interest in face perception, variously focusing on (i) the social aspects of face perception (attraction, recognition and emotion), (ii) the neural mechanisms underlying face perception (using brain scanning, patient data, direct stimulation of the brain, visual adaptation and single-cell recording), and (iii) comparative aspects of face perception (comparing adult human abilities with those of chimpanzees and children). Here, we introduce the central themes of the issue and present an overview of the articles.

Use of World Wide Web-based directories for tracing subjects in epidemiologic studies.

PubMed

Koo, M M; Rohan, T E

2000-11-01

The recent availability of World Wide Web-based directories has opened up a new approach for tracing subjects in epidemiologic studies. The completeness of two World Wide Web-based directories (Canada411 and InfoSpace Canada) for subject tracing was evaluated by using a randomized crossover design for 346 adults randomly selected from respondents in an ongoing cohort study. About half (56.4%) of the subjects were successfully located by using either Canada411 or InfoSpace. Of the 43.6% of the subjects who could not be located using either directory, the majority (73.5%) were female. Overall, there was no clear advantage of one directory over the other. Although Canada411 could find significantly more subjects than InfoSpace, the number of potential matches returned by Canada411 was also higher, which meant that a longer list of potential matches had to be examined before a true match could be found. One strategy to minimize the number of potential matches per true match is to first search by InfoSpace with the last name and first name, then by Canada411 with the last name and first name, and finally by InfoSpace with the last name and first initial. Internet-based searches represent a potentially useful approach to tracing subjects in epidemiologic studies.

Toward Robust Climate Baselining: Objective Assessment of Climate Change Using Widely Distributed Miniaturized Sensors for Accurate World-Wide Geophysical Measurements

DOE R&D Accomplishments Database

Teller, E.; Leith, C.; Canavan, G.; Marion, J.; Wood, L.

2001-11-13

A gap-free, world-wide, ocean-, atmosphere-, and land surface-spanning geophysical data-set of three decades time-duration containing the full set of geophysical parameters characterizing global weather is the scientific perquisite for defining the climate; the generally-accepted definition in the meteorological community is that climate is the 30-year running-average of weather. Until such a tridecadal climate baseline exists, climate change discussions inevitably will have a semi-speculative, vs. a purely scientific, character, as the baseline against which changes are referenced will at least somewhat uncertain.

WWW.Cell Biology Education: Using the World Wide Web to Develop a New Teaching Topic

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blystone, Robert V.; MacAlpine, Barbara

2005-01-01

"Cell Biology Education" calls attention each quarter to several Web sites of educational interest to the biology community. The Internet provides access to an enormous array of potential teaching materials. In this article, the authors describe one approach for using the World Wide Web to develop a new college biology laboratory exercise. As a…

Enhancing Student Performance in First-Semester General Chemistry Using Active Feedback through the World Wide Web

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chambers, Kent A.; Blake, Bob

2007-01-01

The World Wide Web recently launched a new interactive feedback system for the instructors, so that can better understanding about their students and their problems. The feedback, in combination with tailored lectures is expected to enhance student performance in the first semester of general chemistry.

Using the World-Wide Web to Facilitate Communications of Non-Destructive Evaluation

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

McBurney, Sean

1995-01-01

The high reliability required for Aeronautical components is a major reason for extensive Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation. Here at Langley Research Center (LaRC), there are highly trained and certified personal to conduct such testing to prevent hazards from occurring in the workplace and on the research projects for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The purpose of my studies was to develop a communication source to educate others of the services and equipment offered here. This was accomplished by creating documents that are accessible to all in the industry via the World Wide Web.

Journal of Air Transportation World Wide, Volume 4, No. 2. Volume 4

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bowen, Brent D. (Editor); Kabashkin, Igor (Editor)

1999-01-01

The Journal of Air Transportation World Wide's (JATWW) mission is to provide the global community immediate key resource information in all areas of air transportation. The goal of the Journal is to be recognized as the preeminent scholarly journal in the aeronautical aspects of transportation. As an international and interdisciplinary journal, the JATWW will provide a forum for peer-reviewed articles in all areas of aviation and space transportation research, policy, theory, case study, practice, and issues. While maintaining a broad scope, a focal point of the journal will be in the area of aviation administration and policy.

Journal of Air Transportation World Wide, Volume 2, No. 1. Volume 2

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bowen, Brent (Editor)

1997-01-01

The Journal of Air Transportation World Wide's (JATWW) mission is to provide the global community immediate key resource information in all areas of air transportation. Our goal is to be recognized as the preeminent scholarly journal in the aeronautical aspects of transportation. As an international and interdisciplinary journal, the JATWW will provide a forum for peer-reviewed articles in all areas of aviation and space transportation research, policy, theory, case study, practice, and issues. While maintaining a broad scope, a key focal point of the journal will be in the area of aviation administration and policy.

Bibliometrics of the World Wide Web: An Exploratory Analysis of the Intellectual Structure of Cyberspace.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Larson, Ray R.

1996-01-01

Examines the bibliometrics of the World Wide Web based on analysis of Web pages collected by the Inktomi "Web Crawler" and on the use of the DEC AltaVista search engine for cocitation analysis of a set of Earth Science related Web sites. Looks at the statistical characteristics of Web documents and their hypertext links, and the…

Face shape differs in phylogenetically related populations.

PubMed

Hopman, Saskia M J; Merks, Johannes H M; Suttie, Michael; Hennekam, Raoul C M; Hammond, Peter

2014-11-01

3D analysis of facial morphology has delineated facial phenotypes in many medical conditions and detected fine grained differences between typical and atypical patients to inform genotype-phenotype studies. Next-generation sequencing techniques have enabled extremely detailed genotype-phenotype correlative analysis. Such comparisons typically employ control groups matched for age, sex and ethnicity and the distinction between ethnic categories in genotype-phenotype studies has been widely debated. The phylogenetic tree based on genetic polymorphism studies divides the world population into nine subpopulations. Here we show statistically significant face shape differences between two European Caucasian populations of close phylogenetic and geographic proximity from the UK and The Netherlands. The average face shape differences between the Dutch and UK cohorts were visualised in dynamic morphs and signature heat maps, and quantified for their statistical significance using both conventional anthropometry and state of the art dense surface modelling techniques. Our results demonstrate significant differences between Dutch and UK face shape. Other studies have shown that genetic variants influence normal facial variation. Thus, face shape difference between populations could reflect underlying genetic difference. This should be taken into account in genotype-phenotype studies and we recommend that in those studies reference groups be established in the same population as the individuals who form the subject of the study.

The Changing Face of Afghanistan, 2001-08

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-07-01

accordingly, using all of its relevant resources. While the administration recognized the enemy facing the United States and the civilized world ...and the rest of the civilized world several times.2 The President called the attacks “despicable acts of war” on September 13, 2001, and declared the...facing the United States and the civilized world was a global network of Islamic extremist groups, of which al Qaeda is but one, and their state and

Distance and Face-to-Face Learning Culture and Values: A Conceptual Analysis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tejeda-Delgado, Carmen; Millan, Brett J.; Slate, John R.

2011-01-01

With distance learning increasing in popularity across the country and the world, a review of the extant literature as it relates to distance learning and face-to-face learning is warranted. In particular, this paper examined distance learning, including a historical overview, prevailing themes in past research, and studies relating the importance…

The Culture-Transmission Motive in Immigrants: A World-Wide Internet Survey

PubMed Central

Mchitarjan, Irina; Reisenzein, Rainer

2015-01-01

A world-wide internet survey was conducted to test central assumptions of a recent theory of cultural transmission in minorities proposed by the authors. 844 1st to 2nd generation immigrants from a wide variety of countries recruited on a microjob platform completed a questionnaire designed to test eight hypotheses derived from the theory. Support was obtained for all hypotheses. In particular, evidence was obtained for the continued presence, in the immigrants, of the culture-transmission motive postulated by the theory: the desire to maintain the culture of origin and transmit it to the next generation. Support was also obtained for the hypothesized anchoring of the culture-transmission motive in more basic motives fulfilled by cultural groups, the relative intra- and intergenerational stability of the culture-transmission motive, and its motivating effects for action tendencies and desires that support cultural transmission under the difficult conditions of migration. Furthermore, the findings suggest that the assumption that people have a culture-transmission motive belongs to the folk psychology of sociocultural groups, and that immigrants regard the fulfillment of this desire as a moral right. PMID:26529599

The flammability of lip, face and hair preparations in the presence of 100% oxygen.

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1963-11-01

The effects of high concentrations and pressures of oxygen and static sparks upon lip, face and hair preparations were determined because of questions that frequently arise and apprehension that exists. A wide margin of safety was found for their use...

Delivery of laboratory data with World Wide Web technology.

PubMed

Hahn, A W; Leon, M A; Klein-Leon, S; Allen, G K; Boon, G D; Patrick, T B; Klimczak, J C

1997-01-01

We have developed an experimental World Wide Web (WWW) based system to deliver laboratory results to clinicians in our Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. Laboratory results are generated by the clinical pathology section of our Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory and stored in a legacy information system. This system does not interface directly to the hospital information system, and it cannot be accessed directly by clinicians. Our "meta" system first parses routine print reports and then instantiates the data into a modern, open-architecture relational database using a data model constructed with currently accepted international standards for data representation and communication. The system does not affect either of the existing legacy systems. Location-independent delivery of patient data is via a secure WWW based system which maximizes usability and allows "value-added" graphic representations. The data can be viewed with any web browser. Future extensibility and intra- and inter-institutional compatibility served as key design criteria. The system is in the process of being evaluated using accepted methods of assessment of information technologies.

Growth and structure of the World Wide Web: Towards realistic modeling

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tadić, Bosiljka

2002-08-01

We simulate evolution of the World Wide Web from the dynamic rules incorporating growth, bias attachment, and rewiring. We show that the emergent double-hierarchical structure with distinct distributions of out- and in-links is comparable with the observed empirical data when the control parameter (average graph flexibility β) is kept in the range β=3-4. We then explore the Web graph by simulating (a) Web crawling to determine size and depth of connected components, and (b) a random walker that discovers the structure of connected subgraphs with dominant attractor and promoter nodes. A random walker that adapts its move strategy to mimic local node linking preferences is shown to have a short access time to "important" nodes on the Web graph.

Distributed nuclear medicine applications using World Wide Web and Java technology.

PubMed

Knoll, P; Höll, K; Mirzaei, S; Koriska, K; Köhn, H

2000-01-01

At present, medical applications applying World Wide Web (WWW) technology are mainly used to view static images and to retrieve some information. The Java platform is a relative new way of computing, especially designed for network computing and distributed applications which enables interactive connection between user and information via the WWW. The Java 2 Software Development Kit (SDK) including Java2D API, Java Remote Method Invocation (RMI) technology, Object Serialization and the Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) extension was used to achieve a robust, platform independent and network centric solution. Medical image processing software based on this technology is presented and adequate performance capability of Java is demonstrated by an iterative reconstruction algorithm for single photon emission computerized tomography (SPECT).

[Brazilian Army nurses and transportation of the wounded: a challenge faced during World War II].

PubMed

Bernardes, Margarida Maria Rocha; Lopes, Gertrudes Teixeira

2007-01-01

This historic-sociologic study aims to analyse the challenges faced by the Brazilian Expeditionary Force's Air Transportation Nurses of the Army with the Theatre of Operations on the course of World War II. The primary source was comprised of a photograph from this time period and oral testimonies of those who participated in the conflict. Ideas by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu support the discussion. Results suggest that Brazilian nurses were challenged to transport the wounded without medical advice. We conclude that the challenge to fulfill the task imposed, which led to independent decision-making, gave confidence and autonomy to the ones already responsible for the transportation of the wounded.

A World Wide Web selected bibliography for pediatric infectious diseases.

PubMed

Jenson, H B; Baltimore, R S

1999-02-01

A pediatric infectious diseases bibliography of selected medical reference citations has been developed and placed on the World Wide Web (WWW) at http://www.pedid.uthscsa.edu. A regularly updated bibliography of >2,500 selected literature citations representing general reviews and key articles has been organized under a standard outline for individual infectious diseases and related topics that cover the breadth of pediatric infectious diseases. Citations are categorized by infectious disease or clinical syndrome, and access can be achieved by the disease or by syndrome or the name of the pathogen. Abstracts, and in some cases the complete text of articles, may be viewed by use of hypertext links. The bibliography provides medical students, residents, fellows, and clinicians with a constantly available resource of current literature citations in pediatric infectious diseases. The WWW is an emerging educational and clinical resource for the practice of clinical infectious diseases.

User Interface on the World Wide Web: How to Implement a Multi-Level Program Online

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Cranford, Jonathan W.

1995-01-01

The objective of this Langley Aerospace Research Summer Scholars (LARSS) research project was to write a user interface that utilizes current World Wide Web (WWW) technologies for an existing computer program written in C, entitled LaRCRisk. The project entailed researching data presentation and script execution on the WWW and than writing input/output procedures for the database management portion of LaRCRisk.

An Ontology of Quality Initiatives and a Model for Decentralized, Collaborative Quality Management on the (Semantic) World Wide Web

PubMed Central

2001-01-01

This editorial provides a model of how quality initiatives concerned with health information on the World Wide Web may in the future interact with each other. This vision fits into the evolving "Semantic Web" architecture - ie, the prospective that the World Wide Web may evolve from a mess of unstructured, human-readable information sources into a global knowledge base with an additional layer providing richer and more meaningful relationships between resources. One first prerequisite for forming such a "Semantic Web" or "web of trust" among the players active in quality management of health information is that these initiatives make statements about themselves and about each other in a machine-processable language. I present a concrete model on how this collaboration could look, and provide some recommendations on what the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other policy makers in this framework could be. PMID:11772549

An ontology of quality initiatives and a model for decentralized, collaborative quality management on the (semantic) World-Wide-Web.

PubMed

Eysenbach, G

2001-01-01

This editorial provides a model of how quality initiatives concerned with health information on the World Wide Web may in the future interact with each other. This vision fits into the evolving "Semantic Web" architecture - ie, the prospective that the World Wide Web may evolve from a mess of unstructured, human-readable information sources into a global knowledge base with an additional layer providing richer and more meaningful relationships between resources. One first prerequisite for forming such a "Semantic Web" or "web of trust" among the players active in quality management of health information is that these initiatives make statements about themselves and about each other in a machine-processable language. I present a concrete model on how this collaboration could look, and provide some recommendations on what the role of the World Health Organization (WHO) and other policy makers in this framework could be.

Isavuconazole Concentration in Real-world Practice: Consistency with Results from Clinical Trials.

PubMed

Andes, David; Kovanda, Laura; Desai, A; Kitt, Theresa; Zhao, M; Walsh, Thomas J

2018-05-07

Clinical use of voriconazole, posaconazole, and itraconazole revealed the need for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of plasma concentrations of these antifungal agents. This need for TDM was not evident from clinical trials of these drugs. In order to establish if this requirement also applies to isavuconazole, we examined the plasma concentrations of 283 samples receiving isavuconazole in clinical practice and compared the values to those from clinical trials. The concentration distributions from real-world use and clinical trials were nearly identical (>1 μg/mL in 90% of patients). These findings suggest that routine TDM may not be required for isavuconazole in most instances. Copyright © 2018 American Society for Microbiology.

Pre-Service Teachers Critically Evaluate Scientific Information on the World-Wide Web: What Makes Information Believable?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Iding, Marie; Klemm, E. Barbara

2005-01-01

The present study addresses the need for teachers to critically evaluate the credibility, validity, and cognitive load associated with scientific information on Web sites, in order to effectively teach students to evaluate scientific information on the World Wide Web. A line of prior research investigating high school and university students'…

Unreported sauna use in anorexia nervosa: evidence from the world-wide-web.

PubMed

Vähäsoini, A; Vazquez, R; Birmingham, C L; Gutierrez, E

2004-03-01

Weight loss methods employed in anorexia nervosa (AN) are vomiting, laxatives, diuretics, enemas, suppositories, ipecac, weight loss medications and inadequate insulin in diabetics. Some methods result in weight loss from fluid depletion and not a reduction in body fat. Sauna use causes rapid fluid loss, but has not been reported in the medical literature as a weight loss strategy used in AN. We found reports of sauna use in AN on the world-wide-web are rare. We hypothesize that the warming caused by the use of sauna, may result in physical improvement in AN and thereby reduce its acceptability as a weight loss strategy.

Information Architecture for the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rosenfeld, Louis; Morville, Peter

This book provides effective approaches for designers, information architects, and web site managers who are faced with sites that are becoming difficult to use and maintain. The book is divided into 10 sections. Chapter 1: "What Makes a Web Site Work" considers site users needs when designing the architecture; Chapter 2:…

Graphite Girls in a Gigabyte World: Managing the World Wide Web in 700 Square Feet

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ogletree, Tamra; Saurino, Penelope; Johnson, Christie

2009-01-01

Our action research project examined the on-task and off-task behaviors of university-level student, use of wireless laptops in face-to-face classes in order to establish rules of wireless laptop etiquette in classroom settings. Participants in the case study of three university classrooms included undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students.…

WEBSLIDE: A "Virtual" Slide Projector Based on World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Barra, Maria; Ferrandino, Salvatore; Scarano, Vittorio

1999-03-01

We present here the design key concepts of WEBSLIDE, a software project whose objective is to provide a simple, cheap and efficient solution for showing slides during lessons in computer labs. In fact, WEBSLIDE allows the video monitors of several client machines (the "STUDENTS") to be synchronously updated by the actions of a particular client machine, called the "INSTRUCTOR." The system is based on the World Wide Web and the software components of WEBSLIDE mainly consists in a WWW server, browsers and small Cgi-Bill scripts. What makes WEBSLIDE particularly appealing for small educational institutions is that WEBSLIDE is built with "off the shelf" products: it does not involve using a specifically designed program but any Netscape browser, one of the most popular browsers available on the market, is sufficient. Another possible use is to use our system to implement "guided automatic tours" through several pages or Intranets internal news bulletins: the company Web server can broadcast to all employees relevant information on their browser.

Mapping absolute tissue endogenous fluorophore concentrations with chemometric wide-field fluorescence microscopy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Zhang; Reilley, Michael; Li, Run; Xu, Min

2017-06-01

We report chemometric wide-field fluorescence microscopy for imaging the spatial distribution and concentration of endogenous fluorophores in thin tissue sections. Nonnegative factorization aided by spatial diversity is used to learn both the spectral signature and the spatial distribution of endogenous fluorophores from microscopic fluorescence color images obtained under broadband excitation and detection. The absolute concentration map of individual fluorophores is derived by comparing the fluorescence from "pure" fluorophores under the identical imaging condition following the identification of the fluorescence species by its spectral signature. This method is then demonstrated by characterizing the concentration map of endogenous fluorophores (including tryptophan, elastin, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, and flavin adenine dinucleotide) for lung tissue specimens. The absolute concentrations of these fluorophores are all found to decrease significantly from normal, perilesional, to cancerous (squamous cell carcinoma) tissue. Discriminating tissue types using the absolute fluorophore concentration is found to be significantly more accurate than that achievable with the relative fluorescence strength. Quantification of fluorophores in terms of the absolute concentration map is also advantageous in eliminating the uncertainties due to system responses or measurement details, yielding more biologically relevant data, and simplifying the assessment of competing imaging approaches.

What Price the Building of World-Class Universities? Academic Pressure Faced by Young Lecturers at a Research-Centered University in China

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tian, Mei; Lu, Genshu

2017-01-01

This study explores the challenges faced by young lecturers in managerial transformation in elite Chinese academic institutions which aim to develop into world-class universities. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews, the paper discusses how a group of lecturers on tenure-track contracts at a research university in China perceived the impacts…

Information on infantile colic on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Bailey, Shana D; D'Auria, Jennifer P; Haushalter, Jamie P

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the type and quality of information on infantile colic that a parent might access on the World Wide Web. Two checklists were used to evaluate the quality indicators of 24 Web sites and the colic-specific content. Fifteen health information Web sites met more of the quality parameters than the nine commercial sites. Eight Web sites included information about colic and infant abuse, with six being health information sites. The colic-specific content on 24 Web sites reflected current issues and controversies; however, the completeness of the information in light of current evidence varied among the Web sites. Strategies to avoid complications of parental stress or infant abuse were not commonly found on the Web sites. Pediatric professionals must guide parents to reliable colic resources that also include emotional support and understanding of infant crying. A best evidence guideline for the United States would eliminate confusion and uncertainty about which colic therapies are safe and effective for parents and professionals. Copyright © 2013 National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners. Published by Mosby, Inc. All rights reserved.

The world wide web: exploring a new advertising environment.

PubMed

Johnson, C R; Neath, I

1999-01-01

The World Wide Web currently boasts millions of users in the United States alone and is likely to continue to expand both as a marketplace and as an advertising environment. Three experiments explored advertising in the Web environment, in particular memory for ads as they appear in everyday use across the Web. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of advertising repetition on the retention of familiar and less familiar brand names, respectively. Experiment 1 demonstrated that repetition of a banner ad within multiple web pages can improve recall of familiar brand names, and Experiment 2 demonstrated that repetition can improve recognition of less familiar brand names. Experiment 3 directly compared the retention of familiar and less familiar brand names that were promoted by static and dynamic ads and demonstrated that the use of dynamic advertising can increase brand name recall, though only for familiar brand names. This study also demonstrated that, in the Web environment, much as in other advertising environments, familiar brand names possess a mnemonic advantage not possessed by less familiar brand names. Finally, data regarding Web usage gathered from all experiments confirm reports that Web usage among males tends to exceed that among females.

Monitoring and Evaluating Use of the World Wide Web in an Academic Library: An Exploratory Study.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Abramson, Alicia D.

1998-01-01

Examines use of the World Wide Web on public-access computers at the American University Library (Washington, D.C.) to identify the most frequently accessed Web sites, the frequency with which library-owned Web resources were accessed, and Web-usage patterns in the library in relation to the time of day and day of the week. (Author/AEF)

The World Wide Web Revisited

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Owston, Ron

2007-01-01

Nearly a decade ago the author wrote in one of the first widely-cited academic articles, Educational Researcher, about the educational role of the web. He argued that educators must be able to demonstrate that the web (1) can increase access to learning, (2) must not result in higher costs for learning, and (3) can lead to improved learning. These…

Historical development of world wide guided missiles

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Spearman, M. L.

1978-01-01

This paper attempts to put in perspective the development of missiles from early history to present time. The influence of World War II in accelerating the development of guided missiles, particularly through German scientists, is discussed. The dispersion of German scientists to other countries and the coupling of their work with native talent to develop guided missiles is traced. Particular emphasis is placed on the evolution of the missile in the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. Since the Soviets possess what is probably the world's most complete array of dedicated missile system types, their known inventory is reviewed in some detail.

Face time: educating face transplant candidates.

PubMed

Lamparello, Brooke M; Bueno, Ericka M; Diaz-Siso, Jesus Rodrigo; Sisk, Geoffroy C; Pomahac, Bohdan

2013-01-01

Face transplantation is the innovative application of microsurgery and immunology to restore appearance and function to those with severe facial disfigurements. Our group aims to establish a multidisciplinary education program that can facilitate informed consent and build a strong knowledge base in patients to enhance adherence to medication regimes, recovery, and quality of life. We analyzed handbooks from our institution's solid organ transplant programs to identify topics applicable to face transplant patients. The team identified unique features of face transplantation that warrant comprehensive patient education. We created a 181-page handbook to provide subjects interested in pursuing transplantation with a written source of information on the process and team members and to address concerns they may have. While the handbook covers a wide range of topics, it is easy to understand and visually appealing. Face transplantation has many unique aspects that must be relayed to the patients pursuing this novel therapy. Since candidates lack third-party support groups and programs, the transplant team must provide an extensive educational component to enhance this complex process. As face transplantation continues to develop, programs must create sound education programs that address patients' needs and concerns to facilitate optimal care.

Managing World Wide Web Information in a Frames Environment: A Guide to Constructing Web Pages Using Frames.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gilstrap, Donald L.

1998-01-01

Explains how to build World Wide Web home pages using frames-based HTML so that librarians can manage Web-based information and improve their home pages. Provides descriptions and 15 examples for writing frames-HTML code, including advanced concepts and additional techniques for home-page design. (Author/LRW)

Real-Time Payload Control and Monitoring on the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Sun, Charles; Windrem, May; Givens, John J. (Technical Monitor)

1998-01-01

World Wide Web (W3) technologies such as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the Java object-oriented programming environment offer a powerful, yet relatively inexpensive, framework for distributed application software development. This paper describes the design of a real-time payload control and monitoring system that was developed with W3 technologies at NASA Ames Research Center. Based on Java Development Toolkit (JDK) 1.1, the system uses an event-driven "publish and subscribe" approach to inter-process communication and graphical user-interface construction. A C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS) compatible inference engine provides the back-end intelligent data processing capability, while Oracle Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) provides the data management function. Preliminary evaluation shows acceptable performance for some classes of payloads, with Java's portability and multimedia support identified as the most significant benefit.

Evaluation of traditional classroom teaching methods versus course delivery via the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Ryan, M; Carlton, K H; Ali, N S

1999-09-01

Higher education is moving with deliberate speed to an electronic classroom. Much has been published on faculty experiences with World Wide Web (WWW) course delivery. However, little research exists on the evaluation of these methods. The purpose of this study was to evaluate students' perceptions of two approaches to teaching: classroom and WWW modules. Classroom methods were rated significantly higher in relation to content, interaction, participation, faculty preparation, and communication. Technical skills were rated higher for WWW modules. Critical thinking and time allotted for assignments were not significantly different between classroom and WWW instruction. Open-ended comments were rich and supported both positive and negative aspects of classroom and WWW-based modules. Implications call for creativity in course development, course redesign and orientation, active communication with students, support for technical problems, faculty development, and university-wide planning through partnerships.

Glue ear: how good is the information on the World Wide Web?

PubMed

Ritchie, L; Tornari, C; Patel, P M; Lakhani, R

2016-02-01

This paper objectively evaluates current information available to the general public related to glue ear on the World Wide Web. The term 'glue ear' was typed into the 3 most frequently used internet search engines - Google, Bing and Yahoo - and the first 20 links were analysed. The first 400 words of each page were used to calculate the Flesch-Kincaid readability score. Each website was subsequently graded using the Discern instrument, which gauges quality and content of literature. The websites Webmd.boots.com, Bupa.co.uk and Patient.co.uk received the highest overall scores. These reflected top scores in either readability or Discern instrument assessment, but not both. Readability and Discern scores increased with the presence of a marketing or advertising incentive. The Patient.co.uk website had the highest Discern score and third highest readability score. There is huge variation in the quality of information available to patients on the internet. Some websites may be accessible to a wide range of reading ages but have poor quality content, and vice versa. Clinicians should be aware of indicators of quality, and use validated instruments to assess and recommend literature.

Why Some Students Continue to Value Individual, Face-to- Face Research Consultations in a Technology-Rich World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Magi, Trina J.; Mardeusz, Patricia E.

2013-01-01

For decades, academic librarians have provided individual research consultations for students. There is little information, however, about why students schedule consultations, the kinds of assistance students feel are provided by librarians during consultations, and what students find valuable about face-to-face consultations, even with the…

Nurses across borders: displaced Russian and Soviet nurses after World War I and World War II.

PubMed

Grant, Susan

2014-01-01

Russian and Soviet nurse refugees faced myriad challenges attempting to become registered nurses in North America and elsewhere after the World War II. By drawing primarily on International Council of Nurses refugee files, a picture can be pieced together of the fate that befell many of those women who left Russia and later the Soviet Union because of revolution and war in the years after 1917. The history of first (after World War I) and second (after World War II) wave émigré nurses, integrated into the broader historical narrative, reveals that professional identity was just as important to these women as national identity. This became especially so after World War II, when Russian and Soviet refugee nurses resettled in the West. Individual accounts become interwoven on an international canvas that brings together a wide range of personal experiences from women based in Russia, the Soviet Union, China, Yugoslavia, Canada, the United States, and elsewhere. The commonality of experience among Russian nurses as they attempted to establish their professional identities highlights, through the prism of Russia, the importance of the history of the displaced nurse experience in the wider context of international migration history.

World wide web: opportunities, challenges, and threats.

PubMed

Edworthy, S M

1999-01-01

The Internet provides new opportunities to gather information on the population and may provide alternatives to the traditional methods of conducting clinical trials in systemic lupus erythematosus. The 'world wide web-www' has grown extensively in the past decade and it is estimated that there will be over 1 billion individuals on the net by the year 2005. Notifying, recruiting and assessing patients using Internet technology are already potential uses of this electronic medium. However, total reliance on the Internet could lead to biased sampling of patients with lupus. Women with low incomes or who are unemployed are less likely to have access to the Internet. Individuals with neurological deficits may have trouble using the Internet effectively. Data collected on the web may not have high reliability and much work needs to be completed to determine the psychometric properties of information derived from this source. One of the greatest threats to contend with is protecting the confidentiality of patient information when using electronic communication. Safeguards against inadvertent or unintended release of information must receive high priority in any attempt to use the Internet for clinical trials. Particular attention should be paid to email messages, which have the potential to be intercepted or sent to individuals without clearance to see patient information. Nevertheless, the costs to systems performance caused by security measures must also be considered and balanced against the need for access by those with appropriate authority. A number of websites already exist for the benefit of patients and providers. Clinicians and scientists interested in the field of lupus research will need to keep up to date on the rapidly proliferating information that is becoming available. This article lists sites which can be visited now.

Panning for Gold: Utility of the World Wide Web for Metadata and Authority Control in Special Collections.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ellero, Nadine P.

2002-01-01

Describes the use of the World Wide Web as a name authority resource and tool for special collections' analytic-level cataloging, based on experiences at The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library. Highlights include primary documents and metadata; authority control and the Web as authority source information; and future possibilities. (Author/LRW)

Publishing on the WWW. Part 5 - A brief history of the Internet and the World Wide Web

PubMed Central

Grech, V

2001-01-01

This article focuses on the history of the Internet and the World Wide Web, the media that in recent years have created the concept of objects existing ‘on-line’ in a virtual computer environment. These objects naturally include on-line journals such as Images in Paediatric Cardiology. PMID:22368602

Use of World Wide Web Server and Browser Software To Support a First-Year Medical Physiology Course.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davis, Michael J.; And Others

1997-01-01

Describes the use of a World Wide Web server to support a team-taught physiology course for first-year medical students. The students' evaluations indicate that computer use in class made lecture material more interesting, while the online documents helped reinforce lecture materials and textbooks. Lists factors which contribute to the…

Method for implantation of high dopant concentrations in wide band gap materials

DOEpatents

Usov, Igor [Los Alamos, NM; Arendt, Paul N [Los Alamos, NM

2009-09-15

A method that combines alternate low/medium ion dose implantation with rapid thermal annealing at relatively low temperatures. At least one dopant is implanted in one of a single crystal and an epitaxial film of the wide band gap compound by a plurality of implantation cycles. The number of implantation cycles is sufficient to implant a predetermined concentration of the dopant in one of the single crystal and the epitaxial film. Each of the implantation cycles includes the steps of: implanting a portion of the predetermined concentration of the one dopant in one of the single crystal and the epitaxial film; annealing one of the single crystal and the epitaxial film and implanted portion at a predetermined temperature for a predetermined time to repair damage to one of the single crystal and the epitaxial film caused by implantation and activates the implanted dopant; and cooling the annealed single crystal and implanted portion to a temperature of less than about 100.degree. C. This combination produces high concentrations of dopants, while minimizing the defect concentration.

Holistic face training enhances face processing in developmental prosopagnosia

PubMed Central

Cohan, Sarah; Nakayama, Ken

2014-01-01

Prosopagnosia has largely been regarded as an untreatable disorder. However, recent case studies using cognitive training have shown that it is possible to enhance face recognition abilities in individuals with developmental prosopagnosia. Our goal was to determine if this approach could be effective in a larger population of developmental prosopagnosics. We trained 24 developmental prosopagnosics using a 3-week online face-training program targeting holistic face processing. Twelve subjects with developmental prosopagnosia were assessed before and after training, and the other 12 were assessed before and after a waiting period, they then performed the training, and were then assessed again. The assessments included measures of front-view face discrimination, face discrimination with view-point changes, measures of holistic face processing, and a 5-day diary to quantify potential real-world improvements. Compared with the waiting period, developmental prosopagnosics showed moderate but significant overall training-related improvements on measures of front-view face discrimination. Those who reached the more difficult levels of training (‘better’ trainees) showed the strongest improvements in front-view face discrimination and showed significantly increased holistic face processing to the point of being similar to that of unimpaired control subjects. Despite challenges in characterizing developmental prosopagnosics’ everyday face recognition and potential biases in self-report, results also showed modest but consistent self-reported diary improvements. In summary, we demonstrate that by using cognitive training that targets holistic processing, it is possible to enhance face perception across a group of developmental prosopagnosics and further suggest that those who improved the most on the training task received the greatest benefits. PMID:24691394

The Caledonian face test: A new test of face discrimination.

PubMed

Logan, Andrew J; Wilkinson, Frances; Wilson, Hugh R; Gordon, Gael E; Loffler, Gunter

2016-02-01

This study aimed to develop a clinical test of face perception which is applicable to a wide range of patients and can capture normal variability. The Caledonian face test utilises synthetic faces which combine simplicity with sufficient realism to permit individual identification. Face discrimination thresholds (i.e. minimum difference between faces required for accurate discrimination) were determined in an "odd-one-out" task. The difference between faces was controlled by an adaptive QUEST procedure. A broad range of face discrimination sensitivity was determined from a group (N=52) of young adults (mean 5.75%; SD 1.18; range 3.33-8.84%). The test is fast (3-4 min), repeatable (test-re-test r(2)=0.795) and demonstrates a significant inversion effect. The potential to identify impairments of face discrimination was evaluated by testing LM who reported a lifelong difficulty with face perception. While LM's impairment for two established face tests was close to the criterion for significance (Z-scores of -2.20 and -2.27) for the Caledonian face test, her Z-score was -7.26, implying a more than threefold higher sensitivity. The new face test provides a quantifiable and repeatable assessment of face discrimination ability. The enhanced sensitivity suggests that the Caledonian face test may be capable of detecting more subtle impairments of face perception than available tests. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Expert knowledge in palliative care on the World Wide Web: palliativedrugs.org.

PubMed

Gavrin, Jonathan

2009-01-01

In my last Internet-related article, I speculated that social networking would be the coming wave in the effort to share knowledge among experts in various disciplines. At the time I did not know that a palliative care site on the World Wide Web (WWW), palliativedrugs.com, already provided the infrastructure for sharing expert knowledge in the field. The Web site is an excellent traditional formulary but it is primarily devoted to "unlicensed" ("off-label") use of medications in palliative care, something we in the specialty often do with little to support our interventions except shared knowledge and experience. There is nothing fancy about this Web site. In a good way, its format is a throwback to Web sites of the 1990s. In only the loosest sense can one describe it as "multimedia." Yet, it provides the perfect forum for expert knowledge and is a "must see" resource. Its existing content is voluminous and reliable, filtered and reviewed by renowned clinicians and educators in the field. Although its origin and structure were not specifically designed for social or professional networking, the Web site's format makes it a natural way for practitioners around the world to contribute to an ever-growing body of expertise in palliative care.

ETDEWEB versus the World-Wide-Web: a specific database/web comparison

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Cutler, Debbie

2010-06-28

A study was performed comparing user search results from the specialized scientific database on energy-related information, ETDEWEB, with search results from the internet search engines Google and Google Scholar. The primary objective of the study was to determine if ETDEWEB (the Energy Technology Data Exchange – World Energy Base) continues to bring the user search results that are not being found by Google and Google Scholar. As a multilateral information exchange initiative, ETDE’s member countries and partners contribute cost- and task-sharing resources to build the largest database of energy-related information in the world. As of early 2010, the ETDEWEB databasemore » has 4.3 million citations to world-wide energy literature. One of ETDEWEB’s strengths is its focused scientific content and direct access to full text for its grey literature (over 300,000 documents in PDF available for viewing from the ETDE site and over a million additional links to where the documents can be found at research organizations and major publishers globally). Google and Google Scholar are well-known for the wide breadth of the information they search, with Google bringing in news, factual and opinion-related information, and Google Scholar also emphasizing scientific content across many disciplines. The analysis compared the results of 15 energy-related queries performed on all three systems using identical words/phrases. A variety of subjects was chosen, although the topics were mostly in renewable energy areas due to broad international interest. Over 40,000 search result records from the three sources were evaluated. The study concluded that ETDEWEB is a significant resource to energy experts for discovering relevant energy information. For the 15 topics in this study, ETDEWEB was shown to bring the user unique results not shown by Google or Google Scholar 86.7% of the time. Much was learned from the study beyond just metric comparisons. Observations about the strengths

Kruskal-Wallis-based computationally efficient feature selection for face recognition.

PubMed

Ali Khan, Sajid; Hussain, Ayyaz; Basit, Abdul; Akram, Sheeraz

2014-01-01

Face recognition in today's technological world, and face recognition applications attain much more importance. Most of the existing work used frontal face images to classify face image. However these techniques fail when applied on real world face images. The proposed technique effectively extracts the prominent facial features. Most of the features are redundant and do not contribute to representing face. In order to eliminate those redundant features, computationally efficient algorithm is used to select the more discriminative face features. Extracted features are then passed to classification step. In the classification step, different classifiers are ensemble to enhance the recognition accuracy rate as single classifier is unable to achieve the high accuracy. Experiments are performed on standard face database images and results are compared with existing techniques.

Alaskan Auroral All-Sky Images on the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Stenbaek-Nielsen, H. C.

1997-01-01

In response to a 1995 NASA SPDS announcement of support for preservation and distribution of important data sets online, the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Alaska, proposed to provide World Wide Web access to the Poker Flat Auroral All-sky Camera images in real time. The Poker auroral all-sky camera is located in the Davis Science Operation Center at Poker Flat Rocket Range about 30 miles north-east of Fairbanks, Alaska, and is connected, through a microwave link, with the Geophysical Institute where we maintain the data base linked to the Web. To protect the low light-level all-sky TV camera from damage due to excessive light, we only operate during the winter season when the moon is down. The camera and data acquisition is now fully computer controlled. Digital images are transmitted each minute to the Web linked data base where the data are available in a number of different presentations: (1) Individual JPEG compressed images (1 minute resolution); (2) Time lapse MPEG movie of the stored images; and (3) A meridional plot of the entire night activity.

Journal of Air Transportation World Wide, Volume 5, No. 2. Volume 5, No. 2

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Browen, Brent D.

2000-01-01

The Journal of Air Transportation World Wide's (JATWW) mission is to provide the global community immediate key resource information in all areas of air transportation. Our goal is to be recognized as the preeminent scholarly journal in the aeronautical aspects of transportation. As an international and interdisciplinary journal, the JATWW will provide a forum for peer-reviewed articles in all areas of aviation and space transportation research, policy, theory, case study, practice, and issues. While maintaining a broad scope, a focal point of the journal will be in the area of aviation administration and policy.

Effects of excess carriers on charged defect concentrations in wide bandgap semiconductors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alberi, Kirstin; Scarpulla, Michael A.

2018-05-01

Unintentional doping and doping limits in semiconductors are typically caused by compensating defects with low formation energies. Since the formation enthalpy of a charged defect depends linearly on the Fermi level, doping limits can be especially pronounced in wide bandgap semiconductors where the Fermi level can vary substantially. Introduction of non-equilibrium carrier concentrations during growth or processing alters the chemical potentials of band carriers and allows populations of charged defects to be modified in ways impossible at thermal equilibrium. We demonstrate that in the presence of excess carriers, the rates of carrier capture and emission involving a defect charge transition level determine the admixture of electron and hole quasi-Fermi levels involved in the formation enthalpy of non-zero charge defect states. To understand the range of possible responses, we investigate the behavior of a single donor-like defect as functions of extrinsic doping and charge transition level energy. We find that that excess carriers will increase the formation enthalpy of compensating defects for most values of the charge transition level in the bandgap. Thus, it may be possible to use non-equilibrium carrier concentrations to overcome limitations on doping imposed by native defects. Cases also exist in which the concentration of defects with the same charge polarity as the majority dopant is either left unchanged or actually increases. This surprising effect arises when emission rates are suppressed relative to the capture rates and is most pronounced in wide bandgap semiconductors. We provide guidelines for carrying out experimental tests of this model.

Effects of Excess Carriers on Charged Defect Concentrations in Wide Bandgap Semiconductors

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Alberi, Kirstin M; Scarpulla, Michael A.

Unintentional doping and doping limits in semiconductors are typically caused by compensating defects with low formation energies. Since the formation enthalpy of a charged defect depends linearly on the Fermi level, doping limits can be especially pronounced in wide bandgap semiconductors where the Fermi level can vary substantially. Introduction of non-equilibrium carrier concentrations during growth or processing alters the chemical potentials of band carriers and allows populations of charged defects to be modified in ways impossible at thermal equilibrium. We demonstrate that in the presence of excess carriers, the rates of carrier capture and emission involving a defect charge transitionmore » level determine the admixture of electron and hole quasi-Fermi levels involved in the formation enthalpy of non-zero charge defect states. To understand the range of possible responses, we investigate the behavior of a single donor-like defect as functions of extrinsic doping and charge transition level energy. We find that that excess carriers will increase the formation enthalpy of compensating defects for most values of the charge transition level in the bandgap. Thus, it may be possible to use non-equilibrium carrier concentrations to overcome limitations on doping imposed by native defects. Cases also exist in which the concentration of defects with the same charge polarity as the majority dopant is either left unchanged or actually increases. This surprising effect arises when emission rates are suppressed relative to the capture rates and is most pronounced in wide bandgap semiconductors. We provide guidelines for carrying out experimental tests of this model.« less

Software Project Management and Measurement on the World-Wide-Web (WWW)

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Callahan, John; Ramakrishnan, Sudhaka

1996-01-01

We briefly describe a system for forms-based, work-flow management that helps members of a software development team overcome geographical barriers to collaboration. Our system, called the Web Integrated Software Environment (WISE), is implemented as a World-Wide-Web service that allows for management and measurement of software development projects based on dynamic analysis of change activity in the workflow. WISE tracks issues in a software development process, provides informal communication between the users with different roles, supports to-do lists, and helps in software process improvement. WISE minimizes the time devoted to metrics collection and analysis by providing implicit delivery of messages between users based on the content of project documents. The use of a database in WISE is hidden from the users who view WISE as maintaining a personal 'to-do list' of tasks related to the many projects on which they may play different roles.

Increasing public understanding of transgenic crops through the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Byrne, Patrick F; Namuth, Deana M; Harrington, Judy; Ward, Sarah M; Lee, Donald J; Hain, Patricia

2002-07-01

Transgenic crops among the most controversial "science and society" issues of recent years. Because of the complex techniques involved in creating these crops and the polarized debate over their risks and beliefs, a critical need has arisen for accessible and balanced information on this technology. World Wide Web sites offer several advantages for disseminating information on a fast-changing technical topic, including their global accessibility; and their ability to update information frequently, incorporate multimedia formats, and link to networks of other sites. An alliance between two complementary web sites at Colorado State University and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln takes advantage of the web environment to help fill the need for public information on crop genetic engineering. This article describes the objectives and features of each site. Viewership data and other feedback have shown these web sites to be effective means of reaching public audiences on a complex scientific topic.

Where to find nutritional science journals on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Brown, C M

1997-08-01

The World Wide Web (WWW) is a burgeoning information resource that can be utilized for current awareness and assistance in manuscript preparation and submission. The ever changing and expanding nature of the WWW allows it to provide up to the minute information, but this inherent changeability often makes information access difficult. To assist nutrition scientists in locating useful information about nutritional science journals on the WWW, this article critically reviews and describes the WWW sites for seventeen highly ranked nutrition and dietetics journals. Included in each annotation are the site's title, web address or Universal Resource Locator (URL), journal ranking and site authorship. Also listed is whether or not the site makes available the guidelines for authors, tables of contents, abstracts, online ordering, as well as information about the editorial board. This critical survey illustrates that the information on the web, regardless of its authority, is not of equal quality.

The Face in the Crowd Effect Unconfounded: Happy Faces, Not Angry Faces, Are More Efficiently Detected in Single- and Multiple-Target Visual Search Tasks

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Becker, D. Vaughn; Anderson, Uriah S.; Mortensen, Chad R.; Neufeld, Samantha L.; Neel, Rebecca

2011-01-01

Is it easier to detect angry or happy facial expressions in crowds of faces? The present studies used several variations of the visual search task to assess whether people selectively attend to expressive faces. Contrary to widely cited studies (e.g., Ohman, Lundqvist, & Esteves, 2001) that suggest angry faces "pop out" of crowds, our review of…

Face Time: Educating Face Transplant Candidates

PubMed Central

Lamparello, Brooke M.; Bueno, Ericka M.; Diaz-Siso, Jesus Rodrigo; Sisk, Geoffroy C.; Pomahac, Bohdan

2013-01-01

Objective: Face transplantation is the innovative application of microsurgery and immunology to restore appearance and function to those with severe facial disfigurements. Our group aims to establish a multidisciplinary education program that can facilitate informed consent and build a strong knowledge base in patients to enhance adherence to medication regimes, recovery, and quality of life. Methods: We analyzed handbooks from our institution's solid organ transplant programs to identify topics applicable to face transplant patients. The team identified unique features of face transplantation that warrant comprehensive patient education. Results: We created a 181-page handbook to provide subjects interested in pursuing transplantation with a written source of information on the process and team members and to address concerns they may have. While the handbook covers a wide range of topics, it is easy to understand and visually appealing. Conclusions: Face transplantation has many unique aspects that must be relayed to the patients pursuing this novel therapy. Since candidates lack third-party support groups and programs, the transplant team must provide an extensive educational component to enhance this complex process. Practice Implications: As face transplantation continues to develop, programs must create sound education programs that address patients’ needs and concerns to facilitate optimal care. PMID:23861990

The effects of temperature and NaCl concentration on tetragonal lysozyme face growth rates

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Forsythe, Elizabeth; Pusey, Marc Lee

1994-01-01

Measurements were made of the (110) and (101) face growth rates of the tetragonal form of hen egg white lysozyme at 0.1M sodium acetate buffer, pH 4.0, from 4 to 22 C and with 3.0%, 5.0%, and 7.0% NaCl used as the precipitating salt. The data were collected at supersaturation ratios ranging from approximately 4 to approximately 63. Both decreasing temperature and increasing salt concentrations shifted plots of the growth rate versus C/C(sat) to the right, i.e. higher supersaturations were required for comparable growth rates. The observed trends in the growth data are counter to those expected from the solubility data. If tetragonal lysozyme crystal growth is by addition of ordered aggregates from the solution, then the observed growth data could be explained as a result of the effects of lowered temperature and increased salt concentration on the kinetics and equilibrium processes governing protein-protein interactions in solution. The data indicate that temperature would be a more tractable means of controlling the growth rate for tetragonal lysozyme crystals contrary to the usual practice in, e.g., vapor diffusion protein crystal growth, where both the precipitant and protein concentrations are simultaneously increased. However, the available range for control is dependent upon the protein concentration, with the greatest growth rate control being at the lower concentration.

Human exposure assessment resources on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Schwela, Dieter; Hakkinen, Pertti J

2004-05-20

Human exposure assessment is frequently noted as a weak link and bottleneck in the risk assessment process. Fortunately, the World Wide Web and Internet are providing access to numerous valuable sources of human exposure assessment-related information, along with opportunities for information exchange. Internet mailing lists are available as potential online help for exposure assessment questions, e.g. RISKANAL has several hundred members from numerous countries. Various Web sites provide opportunities for training, e.g. Web sites offering general human exposure assessment training include two from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and four from the US National Library of Medicine. Numerous other Web sites offer access to a wide range of exposure assessment information. For example, the (US) Alliance for Chemical Awareness Web site addresses direct and indirect human exposures, occupational exposures and ecological exposure assessments. The US EPA's Exposure Factors Program Web site provides a focal point for current information and data on exposure factors relevant to the United States. In addition, the International Society of Exposure Analysis Web site provides information about how this society seeks to foster and advance the science of exposure analysis. A major opportunity exists for risk assessors and others to broaden the level of exposure assessment information available via Web sites. Broadening the Web's exposure information could include human exposure factors-related information about country- or region-specific ranges in body weights, drinking water consumption, etc. along with residential factors-related information on air changeovers per hour in various types of residences. Further, country- or region-specific ranges on how various tasks are performed by various types of consumers could be collected and provided. Noteworthy are that efforts are underway in Europe to develop a multi-country collection of exposure factors and the European

Impact of the Placement and Quality of Face-to-Face Meetings in a Hybrid Distance Learning Course

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Colucci, William; Koppel, Nicole

2010-01-01

As online and hybrid courses are becoming a wide-spread option for higher education, researchers are exploring various delivery methods. Hybrid courses involve blending two modes of interaction--both face-to-face as well as online. The exact distribution and timing of face-to-face meetings verse online delivery is a question that instructors have…

Information consumerism on the World Wide Web: implications for dermatologists and patients.

PubMed

Travers, Robin L

2002-09-01

The World Wide Web (WWW) is continuing to grow exponentially both in terms of numbers of users and numbers of web pages. There is a trend toward the increasing use of the WWW for medical educational purposes, both among physicians and patients alike. The multimedia capabilities of this evolving medium are particularly relevant to visual medical specialties such as dermatology. The origins of information consumerism on the WWW are examined, and the public health issues surrounding dermatologic information and misinformation, and how consumers navigate through the WWW are reviewed. The economic realities of medical information as a "capital good," and the impact this has on dermatologic information sources on the WWW are also discussed.Finally, strategies for guiding consumers and ourselves toward credible medical information sources on the WWW are outlined.

Internet and World Wide Web-based tools for neuropathology practice and education.

PubMed

Fung, Kar-Ming; Tihan, Tarik

2009-04-01

The Internet and the World Wide Web (www) serve as a source of information and a communication network. Together they form a so-called web or network that allows for transmission and dissemination of information in unprecedented speed, volume and detail. This article presents an overview of the current status of neuropathology content on the www. As well as considering the Internet as a resource for neuropathology practice, education and research, we also address the issue of quality assurance when evaluating Internet and www content. Four major categories of websites (archival, broker, news and blog) are discussed and resources relevant to neuropathology of each type are highlighted. We believe that our report and similar attempts can provide an opportunity to discuss appropriate and effective use of the Internet by the neuropathology community.

Correspondence: World Wide Web access to the British Universities Human Embryo Database

PubMed Central

AITON, JAMES F.; MCDONOUGH, ARIANA; MCLACHLAN, JOHN C.; SMART, STEVEN D.; WHITEN, SUSAN C.

1997-01-01

The British Universities Human Embryo Database has been created by merging information from the Walmsley Collection of Human Embryos at the School of Biological and Medical Sciences, University of St Andrews and from the Boyd Collection of Human Embryos at the Department of Anatomy, University of Cambridge. The database has been made available electronically on the Internet and World Wide Web browsers can be used to implement interactive access to the information stored in the British Universities Human Embryo Database. The database can, therefore, be accessed and searched from remote sites and specific embryos can be identified in terms of their location, age, developmental stage, plane of section, staining technique, and other parameters. It is intended to add information from other similar collections in the UK as it becomes available. PMID:9034891

The positive impacts of Real-World Data on the challenges facing the evolution of biopharma.

PubMed

Wise, John; Möller, Angeli; Christie, David; Kalra, Dipak; Brodsky, Elia; Georgieva, Evelina; Jones, Greg; Smith, Ian; Greiffenberg, Lars; McCarthy, Marie; Arend, Michael; Luttringer, Olivier; Kloss, Sebastian; Arlington, Steve

2018-04-01

Demand for healthcare services is unprecedented. Society is struggling to afford the cost. Pricing of biopharmaceutical products is under scrutiny, especially by payers and Health Technology Assessment agencies. As we discuss here, rapidly advancing technologies, such as Real-World Data (RWD), are being utilized to increase understanding of disease. RWD, when captured and analyzed, produces the Real-World Evidence (RWE) that underpins the economic case for innovative medicines. Furthermore, RWD can inform the understanding of disease, help identify new therapeutic intervention points, and improve the efficiency of research and development (R&D), especially clinical trials. Pursuing precompetitive collaborations to define shared requirements for the use of RWD would equip service-providers with the specifications needed to implement cloud-based solutions for RWD acquisition, management and analysis. Only this approach would deliver cost-effective solutions to an industry-wide problem. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Post-Adoption Face-to-Face Contact with Birth Parents: Prospective Adopters' Views

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Turkington, Selina; Taylor, Brian J.

2009-01-01

The trend in adoption since the 1960s has been away from secrecy and towards greater openness; contact through an intermediary, and direct contact by letter, is now widely accepted. More controversial is the challenge of face-to-face contact with birth parents, and social workers involved in the decision-making process find themselves having to…

Teaching physiology and the World Wide Web: electrochemistry and electrophysiology on the Internet.

PubMed

Dwyer, T M; Fleming, J; Randall, J E; Coleman, T G

1997-12-01

Students seek active learning experiences that can rapidly impart relevant information in the most convenient way possible. Computer-assisted education can now use the resources of the World Wide Web to convey the important characteristics of events as elemental as the physical properties of osmotically active particles in the cell and as complex as the nerve action potential or the integrative behavior of the intact organism. We have designed laboratory exercises that introduce first-year medical students to membrane and action potentials, as well as the more complex example of integrative physiology, using the dynamic properties of computer simulations. Two specific examples are presented. The first presents the physical laws that apply to osmotic, chemical, and electrical gradients, leading to the development of the concept of membrane potentials; this module concludes with the simulation of the ability of the sodium-potassium pump to establish chemical gradients and maintain cell volume. The second module simulates the action potential according to the Hodgkin-Huxley model, illustrating the concepts of threshold, inactivation, refractory period, and accommodation. Students can access these resources during the scheduled laboratories or on their own time via our Web site on the Internet (http./(/)phys-main.umsmed.edu) by using the World Wide Web protocol. Accurate version control is possible because one valid, but easily edited, copy of the labs exists at the Web site. A common graphical interface is possible through the use of the Hypertext mark-up language. Platform independence is possible through the logical and arithmetic calculations inherent to graphical browsers and the Javascript computer language. The initial success of this program indicates that medical education can be very effective both by the use of accurate simulations and by the existence of a universally accessible Internet resource.

TOGA COARE Satellite data summaries available on the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Chen, S. S.; Houze, R. A., Jr.; Mapes, B. E.; Brodzick, S. R.; Yutler, S. E.

1995-01-01

Satellite data summary images and analysis plots from the Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE), which were initially prepared in the field at the Honiara Operations Center, are now available on the Internet via World Wide Web browsers such as Mosaic. These satellite data summaries consist of products derived from the Japanese Geosynchronous Meteorological Satellite IR data: a time-size series of the distribution of contiguous cold cloudiness areas, weekly percent high cloudiness (PHC) maps, and a five-month time-longitudinal diagram illustrating the zonal motion of large areas of cold cloudiness. The weekly PHC maps are overlaid with weekly mean 850-hPa wind calculated from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) global analysis field and can be viewed as an animation loop. These satellite summaries provide an overview of spatial and temporal variabilities of the cloud population and a large-scale context for studies concerning specific processes of various components of TOGA COARE.

WebPresent: a World Wide Web-based telepresentation tool for physicians

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Sampath-Kumar, Srihari; Banerjea, Anindo; Moshfeghi, Mehran

1997-05-01

In this paper, we present the design architecture and the implementation status of WebPresent - a world wide web based tele-presentation tool. This tool allows a physician to use a conference server workstation and make a presentation of patient cases to a geographically distributed audience. The audience consists of other physicians collaborating on patients' health care management and physicians participating in continuing medical education. These physicians are at several locations with networks of different bandwidth and capabilities connecting them. Audiences also receive the patient case information on different computers ranging form high-end display workstations to laptops with low-resolution displays. WebPresent is a scalable networked multimedia tool which supports the presentation of hypertext, images, audio, video, and a white-board to remote physicians with hospital Intranet access. WebPresent allows the audience to receive customized information. The data received can differ in resolution and bandwidth, depending on the availability of resources such as display resolution and network bandwidth.

US IRBs confronting research in the developing world

PubMed Central

Klitzman, Robert L.

2012-01-01

Increasingly, US-sponsored research is carried out in developing countries, but how US Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) approach the challenges they then face is unclear. METHODS I conducted in-depth interviews of 2 hours each, with 46 IRB chairs, directors, administrators and members. I contacted the leadership of 60 IRBs in the United States (US) (every fourth one in the list of the top 240 institutions by National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding), and interviewed IRB leaders from 34 (55%). RESULTS US IRBs face ethical and logistical challenges in interpreting and applying principles and regulations in developing countries, given economic and health disparities, and limited contextual knowledge. These IRBs perceive wide variations in developing world IRBs/RECs’ quality, resources and training; and health systems in some countries may have long-standing practices of corruption. These IRBs often know little of local contexts, regulations and standards of care, and struggle with understandings of other cultures’ differing views of autonomy, and risks and benefits of daily life. US IRBs thus face difficult decisions, including how to interpret principles, how much to pay subjects and how much sustainability to require from researchers. IRB responses and solutions include trying to maintain higher standards for developing world research, obtain cultural expertise, build IRB infrastructure abroad, communicate with foreign IRBs, ‘negotiate’ for maximum benefits for participants and fearing ‘worst-case scenarios’. CONCLUSIONS US IRBs confront a series of tensions and dilemmas in reviewing developing world research. These data have important implications for increased education of IRBs/RECs and researchers in the US and abroad, and for research and practice. PMID:22515423

US IRBs confronting research in the developing world.

PubMed

Klitzman, Robert L

2012-08-01

Increasingly, US-sponsored research is carried out in developing countries, but how US Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) approach the challenges they then face is unclear. I conducted in-depth interviews of about 2 hours each, with 46 IRB chairs, directors, administrators and members. I contacted the leadership of 60 IRBs in the United States (US) (every fourth one in the list of the top 240 institutions by National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding), and interviewed IRB leaders from 34 (55%). US IRBs face ethical and logistical challenges in interpreting and applying principles and regulations in developing countries, given economic and health disparities, and limited contextual knowledge. These IRBs perceive wide variations in developing world IRBs/RECs' quality, resources and training; and health systems in some countries may have long-standing practices of corruption. These US IRBs often know little of local contexts, regulations and standards of care, and struggle with understandings of other cultures' differing views of autonomy, and risks and benefits of daily life. US IRBs thus face difficult decisions, including how to interpret principles, how much to pay subjects and how much sustainability to require from researchers. IRB responses and solutions include trying to maintain higher standards for developing world research, obtain cultural expertise, build IRB infrastructure abroad, communicate with foreign IRBs, and 'negotiate' for maximum benefits for participants and fearing 'worst-case scenarios'. US and foreign IRBs confront a series of tensions and dilemmas in reviewing developing world research. These data have important implications for increased education of IRBs/RECs and researchers in the US and abroad, and for research and practice. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Browsing the World Wide Web from behind a firewall

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Simons, R.W.

1995-02-01

The World Wide Web provides a unified method of access to various information services on the Internet via a variety of protocols. Mosaic and other browsers give users a graphical interface to the Web that is easier to use and more visually pleasing than any other common Internet information service today. The availability of information via the Web and the number of users accessing it have both grown rapidly in the last year. The interest and investment of commercial firms in this technology suggest that in the near future, access to the Web may become as necessary to doing businessmore » as a telephone. This is problematical for organizations that use firewalls to protect their internal networks from the Internet. Allowing all the protocols and types of information found in the Web to pass their firewall will certainly increase the risk of attack by hackers on the Internet. But not allowing access to the Web could be even more dangerous, as frustrated users of the internal network are either unable to do their jobs, or find creative new ways to get around the firewall. The solution to this dilemma adopted at Sandia National Laboratories is described. Discussion also covers risks of accessing the Web, design alternatives considered, and trade-offs used to find the proper balance between access and protection.« less

Stacking fault energies of face-centered cubic concentrated solid solution alloys

DOE PAGES

Zhao, Shijun; Stocks, G. Malcolm; Zhang, Yanwen

2017-06-22

We report the stacking fault energy (SFE) for a series of face-centered cubic (fcc) equiatomic concentrated solid solution alloys (CSAs) derived as subsystems from the NiCoFeCrMn and NiCoFeCrPd high entropy alloys based on ab initio calculations. At low temperatures, these CSAs display very low even negative SFEs, indicating that hexagonal close-pack ( hcp) is more energy favorable than fcc structure. The temperature dependence of SFE for some CSAs is studied. With increasing temperature, a hcp-to- fcc transition is revealed for those CSAs with negative SFEs, which can be attributed to the role of intrinsic vibrational entropy. The analysis of themore » vibrational modes suggests that the vibrational entropy arises from the high frequency states in the hcp structure that originate from local vibrational mode. Furthermore, our results underscore the importance of vibrational entropy in determining the temperature dependence of SFE for CSAs.« less

Stacking fault energies of face-centered cubic concentrated solid solution alloys

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Zhao, Shijun; Stocks, G. Malcolm; Zhang, Yanwen

We report the stacking fault energy (SFE) for a series of face-centered cubic (fcc) equiatomic concentrated solid solution alloys (CSAs) derived as subsystems from the NiCoFeCrMn and NiCoFeCrPd high entropy alloys based on ab initio calculations. At low temperatures, these CSAs display very low even negative SFEs, indicating that hexagonal close-pack ( hcp) is more energy favorable than fcc structure. The temperature dependence of SFE for some CSAs is studied. With increasing temperature, a hcp-to- fcc transition is revealed for those CSAs with negative SFEs, which can be attributed to the role of intrinsic vibrational entropy. The analysis of themore » vibrational modes suggests that the vibrational entropy arises from the high frequency states in the hcp structure that originate from local vibrational mode. Furthermore, our results underscore the importance of vibrational entropy in determining the temperature dependence of SFE for CSAs.« less

Chemical markup, XML, and the World Wide Web. 5. Applications of chemical metadata in RSS aggregators.

PubMed

Murray-Rust, Peter; Rzepa, Henry S; Williamson, Mark J; Willighagen, Egon L

2004-01-01

Examples of the use of the RSS 1.0 (RDF Site Summary) specification together with CML (Chemical Markup Language) to create a metadata based alerting service termed CMLRSS for molecular content are presented. CMLRSS can be viewed either using generic software or with modular opensource chemical viewers and editors enhanced with CMLRSS modules. We discuss the more automated use of CMLRSS as a component of a World Wide Molecular Matrix of semantically rich chemical information.

The morphometrics of "masculinity" in human faces.

PubMed

Mitteroecker, Philipp; Windhager, Sonja; Müller, Gerd B; Schaefer, Katrin

2015-01-01

In studies of social inference and human mate preference, a wide but inconsistent array of tools for computing facial masculinity has been devised. Several of these approaches implicitly assumed that the individual expression of sexually dimorphic shape features, which we refer to as maleness, resembles facial shape features perceived as masculine. We outline a morphometric strategy for estimating separately the face shape patterns that underlie perceived masculinity and maleness, and for computing individual scores for these shape patterns. We further show how faces with different degrees of masculinity or maleness can be constructed in a geometric morphometric framework. In an application of these methods to a set of human facial photographs, we found that shape features typically perceived as masculine are wide faces with a wide inter-orbital distance, a wide nose, thin lips, and a large and massive lower face. The individual expressions of this combination of shape features--the masculinity shape scores--were the best predictor of rated masculinity among the compared methods (r = 0.5). The shape features perceived as masculine only partly resembled the average face shape difference between males and females (sexual dimorphism). Discriminant functions and Procrustes distances to the female mean shape were poor predictors of perceived masculinity.

A Phenomenological Study of Teamwork in Online and Face-to-Face Student Teams

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saghafian, Marzieh; O'Neill, D. Kevin

2018-01-01

Team-based projects are widely used in both traditional face-to-face and online programs in higher education. To date, the teamwork experiences of students in each modality have been documented primarily through evaluative research conducted over short spans of time and limited by a priori frameworks. The literature also reflects a lack of…

Marketing Learning Communities to Generation Z: The Importance of Face-to-Face Interaction in a Digitally Driven World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Spears, Julia; Zobac, Stephanie R.; Spillane, Allison; Thomas, Shannon

2015-01-01

This article aims to identify the marketing strategies utilized by Learning Community (LC) administrators at two large, public, four-year research universities in the Midwest. The use of digital media coupled with face-to-face interaction is identified as an effective method of marketing LCs to the newest population of incoming college students,…

A survey of kidney disease and risk-factor information on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Calderón, José Luis; Zadshir, Ashraf; Norris, Keith

2004-11-11

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is epidemic, and informing those at risk is a national health priority. However, the discrepancy between the readability of health information and the literacy skills of those it targets is a recognized barrier to communicating health information that may promote good health outcomes. Because the World Wide Web has become one of the most important sources of health information, we sought to assess the readability of commonly available CKD information. Twelve highly cited English-language, kidney disease Web sites were identified with 4 popular search engines. Each Web site was reviewed for the availability of 6 domains of information germane to CKD and risk-factor information. We estimated readability scores with the Flesch-Kincaid and Flesch Reading Ease Index methods. The deviation of readability scores for CKD information from readability appropriate to average literacy skills and the limited literacy skills of vulnerable populations (low socioeconomic status, health disparities, and elderly) were calculated. Eleven Web sites met the inclusion criteria. Six of 11 sites provided information on all 6 domains of CKD and risk-factor information. Mean readability scores for all 6 domains of CKD information exceeded national average literacy skills and far exceeded the fifth-grade-level readability desired for informing vulnerable populations. Information about CKD and diabetes consistently had higher readability scores. Information on the World Wide Web about CKD and its risk factors may not be readable for comprehension by the general public, especially by underserved minority populations with limited literacy skills. Barriers to health communication may be important contributors to the rising CKD epidemic and disparities in CKD health status experienced by minority populations.

Distance Interaction through the World Wide Web in Graduate Teacher Education: A Follow-Up Analysis of Student Perceptions.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thompson, Jay C., Jr.; Nay, Frederick W.

This study, a follow-up to an earlier study (reported in the 1998 "Mid-Western Educational Researcher" v10 n4) used the World Wide Web and a "Class Page" to evaluate interaction strategies in a distance education setting. This study further examines Lev Vygotsky's social learning theories as they apply to the asynchronous…

Combined 60° Wide-Field Choroidal Thickness Maps and High-Definition En Face Vasculature Visualization Using Swept-Source Megahertz OCT at 1050 nm

PubMed Central

Mohler, Kathrin J.; Draxinger, Wolfgang; Klein, Thomas; Kolb, Jan Philip; Wieser, Wolfgang; Haritoglou, Christos; Kampik, Anselm; Fujimoto, James G.; Neubauer, Aljoscha S.; Huber, Robert; Wolf, Armin

2015-01-01

Purpose To demonstrate ultrahigh-speed swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) at 1.68 million A-scans/s for choroidal imaging in normal and diseased eyes over a ∼60° field of view. To investigate and correlate wide-field three-dimensional (3D) choroidal thickness (ChT) and vascular patterns using ChT maps and coregistered high-definition en face images extracted from a single densely sampled Megahertz-OCT (MHz-OCT) dataset. Methods High-definition, ∼60° wide-field 3D datasets consisting of 2088 × 1024 A-scans were acquired using a 1.68 MHz prototype SS-OCT system at 1050 nm based on a Fourier-domain mode-locked laser. Nine subjects (nine eyes) with various chorioretinal diseases or without ocular pathology are presented. Coregistered ChT maps, choroidal summation maps, and depth-resolved en face images referenced to either the retinal pigment epithelium or the choroidal–scleral interface were generated using manual segmentation. Results Wide-field ChT maps showed a large inter- and intraindividual variance in peripheral and central ChT. In only four of the nine eyes, the location with the largest ChT was coincident with the fovea. The anatomy of the large lumen vessels of the outer choroid seems to play a major role in determining the global ChT pattern. Focal ChT changes with large thickness gradients were observed in some eyes. Conclusions Different ChT and vascular patterns could be visualized over ∼60° in patients for the first time using OCT. Due to focal ChT changes, a high density of thickness measurements may be favorable. High-definition depth-resolved en face images are complementary to cross sections and thickness maps and enhance the interpretation of different ChT patterns. PMID:26431482

Combined 60° Wide-Field Choroidal Thickness Maps and High-Definition En Face Vasculature Visualization Using Swept-Source Megahertz OCT at 1050 nm.

PubMed

Mohler, Kathrin J; Draxinger, Wolfgang; Klein, Thomas; Kolb, Jan Philip; Wieser, Wolfgang; Haritoglou, Christos; Kampik, Anselm; Fujimoto, James G; Neubauer, Aljoscha S; Huber, Robert; Wolf, Armin

2015-10-01

To demonstrate ultrahigh-speed swept-source optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) at 1.68 million A-scans/s for choroidal imaging in normal and diseased eyes over a ∼60° field of view. To investigate and correlate wide-field three-dimensional (3D) choroidal thickness (ChT) and vascular patterns using ChT maps and coregistered high-definition en face images extracted from a single densely sampled Megahertz-OCT (MHz-OCT) dataset. High-definition, ∼60° wide-field 3D datasets consisting of 2088 × 1024 A-scans were acquired using a 1.68 MHz prototype SS-OCT system at 1050 nm based on a Fourier-domain mode-locked laser. Nine subjects (nine eyes) with various chorioretinal diseases or without ocular pathology are presented. Coregistered ChT maps, choroidal summation maps, and depth-resolved en face images referenced to either the retinal pigment epithelium or the choroidal-scleral interface were generated using manual segmentation. Wide-field ChT maps showed a large inter- and intraindividual variance in peripheral and central ChT. In only four of the nine eyes, the location with the largest ChT was coincident with the fovea. The anatomy of the large lumen vessels of the outer choroid seems to play a major role in determining the global ChT pattern. Focal ChT changes with large thickness gradients were observed in some eyes. Different ChT and vascular patterns could be visualized over ∼60° in patients for the first time using OCT. Due to focal ChT changes, a high density of thickness measurements may be favorable. High-definition depth-resolved en face images are complementary to cross sections and thickness maps and enhance the interpretation of different ChT patterns.

Infant Gastroesophageal Reflux Information on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Balgowan, Regina; Greer, Leah C; D'Auria, Jennifer P

2016-01-01

The purpose of this study was to describe the type and quality of health information about infant gastroesophageal reflux (GER) that a parent may find on the World Wide Web. The data collection tool included evaluation of Web site quality and infant GER-specific content on the 30 sites that met the inclusion criteria. The most commonly found content categories in order of frequency were management strategies, when to call a primary care provider, definition, and clinical features. The most frequently mentioned strategies included feeding changes, infant positioning, and medications. Thirteen of the 30 Web sites included information on both GER and gastroesophageal reflux disease. Mention of the use of medication to lessen infant symptoms was found on 15 of the 30 sites. Only 10 of the 30 sites included information about parent support and coping strategies. Pediatric nurse practitioners (PNPs) should utilize well-child visits to address the normalcy of physiologic infant GER and clarify any misperceptions parents may have about diagnosis and the role of medication from information they may have found on the Internet. It is critical for PNPs to assist in the development of Web sites with accurate content, advise parents on how to identify safe and reliable information, and provide examples of high-quality Web sites about child health topics such as infant GER. Copyright © 2016 National Association of Pediatric Nurse Practitioners. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

World-Wide and Regional Examination of Substrates Facilitating Timberline Expansion

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Johnson, A. C.; Yeakley, J. A.

2010-12-01

Upward advance of timberlines, associated with climate warming, is occurring in the Pacific Northwest (PNW) as well as many other mountainous regions of the world. Examination of seedling establishment and survival of sensitive seedlings, rather than examination of older resilient trees, may give a clearer understanding of current climatic factors affecting potential expansion of timberline. Our investigation of seedling establishment along timberline edges in the PNW indicates that trees often germinate on small landforms known as microsites. Microsites include small convexities or concavities on the soil surface having a scale of centimeters to meters, but also include associations with slope, aspect, rocks or plants, or substrates dominated by mineral soil or wood. Growing on favorable microsites helps seedlings cope with some of the stresses that exist at high elevation sites including wind, cold temperatures, high radiation, drought, animal predation, and infestation by fungal pathogens found in snow and soil. Microsites, by providing warmer substrates, adequate moisture, and shelter, allow plants to function more affectively in mountain environments. Our summary of microsite type and associated timberline advance in a world-wide context indicates that factors such as snow accumulation, summer rainfall, and availability of microsites, will control timberline advance. In windswept timberline locations, rocks and plants provide shelter from wind and reduce the likelihood of night frost. In arid climates, concave microsites aid in snow deposition providing needed moisture to seedlings during periods of drought. In contrast, convex microsites and wood substrates, typical sites of regeneration in the PNW where precipitation typically exceeds 150 cm per year, facilitate early snow melt, thereby increasing growing season. Large trees at the edge of timberline fall into alpine meadows, decay, and provide sites for seedling establishment. These sites commonly called

Testing Quantum Models of Conjunction Fallacy on the World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Aerts, Diederik; Arguëlles, Jonito Aerts; Beltran, Lester; Beltran, Lyneth; de Bianchi, Massimiliano Sassoli; Sozzo, Sandro; Veloz, Tomas

2017-12-01

The `conjunction fallacy' has been extensively debated by scholars in cognitive science and, in recent times, the discussion has been enriched by the proposal of modeling the fallacy using the quantum formalism. Two major quantum approaches have been put forward: the first assumes that respondents use a two-step sequential reasoning and that the fallacy results from the presence of `question order effects'; the second assumes that respondents evaluate the cognitive situation as a whole and that the fallacy results from the `emergence of new meanings', as an `effect of overextension' in the conceptual conjunction. Thus, the question arises as to determine whether and to what extent conjunction fallacies would result from `order effects' or, instead, from `emergence effects'. To help clarify this situation, we propose to use the World Wide Web as an `information space' that can be interrogated both in a sequential and non-sequential way, to test these two quantum approaches. We find that `emergence effects', and not `order effects', should be considered the main cognitive mechanism producing the observed conjunction fallacies.

Levinas, Ethics, Pedagogy, and the Face

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Carriere, Peter M.

2007-01-01

Emmanuel Levinas is one of those thinkers whose ideas about ethics and morality have something to say about teaching. Concerned with ethics in a world that seemed devoid of morality, Levinas posited the ultimate responsibility of the I for the Face. The Face, or the Other, the not-me according to Levinas, requires and demands this responsibility…

Faculty Perspectives of Faculty Persona in a Virtual World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Blackmon, Stephanie J.

2013-01-01

Immersive virtual worlds provide a new way to deliver online courses or parts of online and face-to-face courses. There is a growing body of research on online learning, and the data on virtual worlds is also increasing. However, literature concerning professors' experiences with specific aspects of virtual worlds is limited. For example,…

Genome-wide association study identifies loci influencing concentrations of liver enzymes in plasma

PubMed Central

Chambers, John C; Zhang, Weihua; Sehmi, Joban; Li, Xinzhong; Wass, Mark N; Van der Harst, Pim; Holm, Hilma; Sanna, Serena; Kavousi, Maryam; Baumeister, Sebastian E; Coin, Lachlan J; Deng, Guohong; Gieger, Christian; Heard-Costa, Nancy L; Hottenga, Jouke-Jan; Kühnel, Brigitte; Kumar, Vinod; Lagou, Vasiliki; Liang, Liming; Luan, Jian’an; Vidal, Pedro Marques; Leach, Irene Mateo; O’Reilly, Paul F; Peden, John F; Rahmioglu, Nilufer; Soininen, Pasi; Speliotes, Elizabeth K; Yuan, Xin; Thorleifsson, Gudmar; Alizadeh, Behrooz Z; Atwood, Larry D; Borecki, Ingrid B; Brown, Morris J; Charoen, Pimphen; Cucca, Francesco; Das, Debashish; de Geus, Eco J C; Dixon, Anna L; Döring, Angela; Ehret, Georg; Eyjolfsson, Gudmundur I; Farrall, Martin; Forouhi, Nita G; Friedrich, Nele; Goessling, Wolfram; Gudbjartsson, Daniel F; Harris, Tamara B; Hartikainen, Anna-Liisa; Heath, Simon; Hirschfield, Gideon M; Hofman, Albert; Homuth, Georg; Hyppönen, Elina; Janssen, Harry L A; Johnson, Toby; Kangas, Antti J; Kema, Ido P; Kühn, Jens P; Lai, Sandra; Lathrop, Mark; Lerch, Markus M; Li, Yun; Liang, T Jake; Lin, Jing-Ping; Loos, Ruth J F; Martin, Nicholas G; Moffatt, Miriam F; Montgomery, Grant W; Munroe, Patricia B; Musunuru, Kiran; Nakamura, Yusuke; O’Donnell, Christopher J; Olafsson, Isleifur; Penninx, Brenda W; Pouta, Anneli; Prins, Bram P; Prokopenko, Inga; Puls, Ralf; Ruokonen, Aimo; Savolainen, Markku J; Schlessinger, David; Schouten, Jeoffrey N L; Seedorf, Udo; Sen-Chowdhry, Srijita; Siminovitch, Katherine A; Smit, Johannes H; Spector, Timothy D; Tan, Wenting; Teslovich, Tanya M; Tukiainen, Taru; Uitterlinden, Andre G; Van der Klauw, Melanie M; Vasan, Ramachandran S; Wallace, Chris; Wallaschofski, Henri; Wichmann, H-Erich; Willemsen, Gonneke; Würtz, Peter; Xu, Chun; Yerges-Armstrong, Laura M; Abecasis, Goncalo R; Ahmadi, Kourosh R; Boomsma, Dorret I; Caulfield, Mark; Cookson, William O; van Duijn, Cornelia M; Froguel, Philippe; Matsuda, Koichi; McCarthy, Mark I; Meisinger, Christa; Mooser, Vincent; Pietiläinen, Kirsi H; Schumann, Gunter; Snieder, Harold; Sternberg, Michael J E; Stolk, Ronald P; Thomas, Howard C; Thorsteinsdottir, Unnur; Uda, Manuela; Waeber, Gérard; Wareham, Nicholas J; Waterworth, Dawn M; Watkins, Hugh; Whitfield, John B; Witteman, Jacqueline C M; Wolffenbuttel, Bruce H R; Fox, Caroline S; Ala-Korpela, Mika; Stefansson, Kari; Vollenweider, Peter; Völzke, Henry; Schadt, Eric E; Scott, James; Järvelin, Marjo-Riitta; Elliott, Paul; Kooner, Jaspal S

2012-01-01

Concentrations of liver enzymes in plasma are widely used as indicators of liver disease. We carried out a genome-wide association study in 61,089 individuals, identifying 42 loci associated with concentrations of liver enzymes in plasma, of which 32 are new associations (P = 10−8 to P = 10−190). We used functional genomic approaches including metabonomic profiling and gene expression analyses to identify probable candidate genes at these regions. We identified 69 candidate genes, including genes involved in biliary transport (ATP8B1 and ABCB11), glucose, carbohydrate and lipid metabolism (FADS1, FADS2, GCKR, JMJD1C, HNF1A, MLXIPL, PNPLA3, PPP1R3B, SLC2A2 and TRIB1), glycoprotein biosynthesis and cell surface glycobiology (ABO, ASGR1, FUT2, GPLD1 and ST3GAL4), inflammation and immunity (CD276, CDH6, GCKR, HNF1A, HPR, ITGA1, RORA and STAT4) and glutathione metabolism (GSTT1, GSTT2 and GGT), as well as several genes of uncertain or unknown function (including ABHD12, EFHD1, EFNA1, EPHA2, MICAL3 and ZNF827). Our results provide new insight into genetic mechanisms and pathways influencing markers of liver function. PMID:22001757

Genome-wide association study identifies loci influencing concentrations of liver enzymes in plasma.

PubMed

Chambers, John C; Zhang, Weihua; Sehmi, Joban; Li, Xinzhong; Wass, Mark N; Van der Harst, Pim; Holm, Hilma; Sanna, Serena; Kavousi, Maryam; Baumeister, Sebastian E; Coin, Lachlan J; Deng, Guohong; Gieger, Christian; Heard-Costa, Nancy L; Hottenga, Jouke-Jan; Kühnel, Brigitte; Kumar, Vinod; Lagou, Vasiliki; Liang, Liming; Luan, Jian'an; Vidal, Pedro Marques; Mateo Leach, Irene; O'Reilly, Paul F; Peden, John F; Rahmioglu, Nilufer; Soininen, Pasi; Speliotes, Elizabeth K; Yuan, Xin; Thorleifsson, Gudmar; Alizadeh, Behrooz Z; Atwood, Larry D; Borecki, Ingrid B; Brown, Morris J; Charoen, Pimphen; Cucca, Francesco; Das, Debashish; de Geus, Eco J C; Dixon, Anna L; Döring, Angela; Ehret, Georg; Eyjolfsson, Gudmundur I; Farrall, Martin; Forouhi, Nita G; Friedrich, Nele; Goessling, Wolfram; Gudbjartsson, Daniel F; Harris, Tamara B; Hartikainen, Anna-Liisa; Heath, Simon; Hirschfield, Gideon M; Hofman, Albert; Homuth, Georg; Hyppönen, Elina; Janssen, Harry L A; Johnson, Toby; Kangas, Antti J; Kema, Ido P; Kühn, Jens P; Lai, Sandra; Lathrop, Mark; Lerch, Markus M; Li, Yun; Liang, T Jake; Lin, Jing-Ping; Loos, Ruth J F; Martin, Nicholas G; Moffatt, Miriam F; Montgomery, Grant W; Munroe, Patricia B; Musunuru, Kiran; Nakamura, Yusuke; O'Donnell, Christopher J; Olafsson, Isleifur; Penninx, Brenda W; Pouta, Anneli; Prins, Bram P; Prokopenko, Inga; Puls, Ralf; Ruokonen, Aimo; Savolainen, Markku J; Schlessinger, David; Schouten, Jeoffrey N L; Seedorf, Udo; Sen-Chowdhry, Srijita; Siminovitch, Katherine A; Smit, Johannes H; Spector, Timothy D; Tan, Wenting; Teslovich, Tanya M; Tukiainen, Taru; Uitterlinden, Andre G; Van der Klauw, Melanie M; Vasan, Ramachandran S; Wallace, Chris; Wallaschofski, Henri; Wichmann, H-Erich; Willemsen, Gonneke; Würtz, Peter; Xu, Chun; Yerges-Armstrong, Laura M; Abecasis, Goncalo R; Ahmadi, Kourosh R; Boomsma, Dorret I; Caulfield, Mark; Cookson, William O; van Duijn, Cornelia M; Froguel, Philippe; Matsuda, Koichi; McCarthy, Mark I; Meisinger, Christa; Mooser, Vincent; Pietiläinen, Kirsi H; Schumann, Gunter; Snieder, Harold; Sternberg, Michael J E; Stolk, Ronald P; Thomas, Howard C; Thorsteinsdottir, Unnur; Uda, Manuela; Waeber, Gérard; Wareham, Nicholas J; Waterworth, Dawn M; Watkins, Hugh; Whitfield, John B; Witteman, Jacqueline C M; Wolffenbuttel, Bruce H R; Fox, Caroline S; Ala-Korpela, Mika; Stefansson, Kari; Vollenweider, Peter; Völzke, Henry; Schadt, Eric E; Scott, James; Järvelin, Marjo-Riitta; Elliott, Paul; Kooner, Jaspal S

2011-10-16

Concentrations of liver enzymes in plasma are widely used as indicators of liver disease. We carried out a genome-wide association study in 61,089 individuals, identifying 42 loci associated with concentrations of liver enzymes in plasma, of which 32 are new associations (P = 10(-8) to P = 10(-190)). We used functional genomic approaches including metabonomic profiling and gene expression analyses to identify probable candidate genes at these regions. We identified 69 candidate genes, including genes involved in biliary transport (ATP8B1 and ABCB11), glucose, carbohydrate and lipid metabolism (FADS1, FADS2, GCKR, JMJD1C, HNF1A, MLXIPL, PNPLA3, PPP1R3B, SLC2A2 and TRIB1), glycoprotein biosynthesis and cell surface glycobiology (ABO, ASGR1, FUT2, GPLD1 and ST3GAL4), inflammation and immunity (CD276, CDH6, GCKR, HNF1A, HPR, ITGA1, RORA and STAT4) and glutathione metabolism (GSTT1, GSTT2 and GGT), as well as several genes of uncertain or unknown function (including ABHD12, EFHD1, EFNA1, EPHA2, MICAL3 and ZNF827). Our results provide new insight into genetic mechanisms and pathways influencing markers of liver function.

Exploring relationship between face-to-face interaction and team performance using wearable sensor badges.

PubMed

Watanabe, Jun-ichiro; Ishibashi, Nozomu; Yano, Kazuo

2014-01-01

Quantitative analyses of human-generated data collected in various fields have uncovered many patterns of complex human behaviors. However, thus far the quantitative evaluation of the relationship between the physical behaviors of employees and their performance has been inadequate. Here, we present findings demonstrating the significant relationship between the physical behaviors of employees and their performance via experiments we conducted in inbound call centers while the employees wore sensor badges. There were two main findings. First, we found that face-to-face interaction among telecommunicators and the frequency of their bodily movements caused by the face-to-face interaction had a significant correlation with the entire call center performance, which we measured as "Calls per Hour." Second, our trial to activate face-to-face interaction on the basis of data collected by the wearable sensor badges the employees wore significantly increased their performance. These results demonstrate quantitatively that human-human interaction in the physical world plays an important role in team performance.

Exploring Relationship between Face-to-Face Interaction and Team Performance Using Wearable Sensor Badges

PubMed Central

Watanabe, Jun-ichiro; Ishibashi, Nozomu; Yano, Kazuo

2014-01-01

Quantitative analyses of human-generated data collected in various fields have uncovered many patterns of complex human behaviors. However, thus far the quantitative evaluation of the relationship between the physical behaviors of employees and their performance has been inadequate. Here, we present findings demonstrating the significant relationship between the physical behaviors of employees and their performance via experiments we conducted in inbound call centers while the employees wore sensor badges. There were two main findings. First, we found that face-to-face interaction among telecommunicators and the frequency of their bodily movements caused by the face-to-face interaction had a significant correlation with the entire call center performance, which we measured as “Calls per Hour.” Second, our trial to activate face-to-face interaction on the basis of data collected by the wearable sensor badges the employees wore significantly increased their performance. These results demonstrate quantitatively that human-human interaction in the physical world plays an important role in team performance. PMID:25501748

Network dynamics: The World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Adamic, Lada Ariana

Despite its rapidly growing and dynamic nature, the Web displays a number of strong regularities which can be understood by drawing on methods of statistical physics. This thesis finds power-law distributions in website sizes, traffic, and links, and more importantly, develops a stochastic theory which explains them. Power-law link distributions are shown to lead to network characteristics which are especially suitable for scalable localized search. It is also demonstrated that the Web is a "small world": to reach one site from any other takes an average of only 4 hops, while most related sites cluster together. Additional dynamical properties of the Web graph are extracted from diffusion processes.

World Wide Web Astronomy 2.0

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Koppelman, M.; Gay, P. L.

2008-11-01

The Internet has changed astronomy. It's changed research, outreach and education and it's changed how people consume astronomy as enthusiasts. People have new ways to talk to each other and new ways to participate. Coined ``Web 2.0,'' technologies such as blogs, social networks, wikis, photo and video sharing sites, podcasts and micro-blogging have been adopted by the astronomy community and exciting things are happening as a result. The International Year of Astronomy's New Media Task Force has been working to harness the excitement of ``Web 2.0'' to make the International Year of Astronomy (IYA2009) highly visible on the Internet around the world.

Effects of Learning Style and Training Method on Computer Attitude and Performance in World Wide Web Page Design Training.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chou, Huey-Wen; Wang, Yu-Fang

1999-01-01

Compares the effects of two training methods on computer attitude and performance in a World Wide Web page design program in a field experiment with high school students in Taiwan. Discusses individual differences, Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory and Learning Style Inventory, Computer Attitude Scale, and results of statistical analyses.…

Ultra-wide detectable concentration range of GMR biosensors using Fe3O4 microspheres

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xu, Jie; Li, Qiang; Zong, Weihua; Zhang, Yongcheng; Li, Shandong

2016-11-01

Exchange-biased GMR sensors were employed for biodetection using a DC in-plane measuring method and a magnetic label of Fe3O4 microspheres. It was revealed that an ultra-wide concentration span covering five orders from 10 ng/mL to 1000 μg/mL was achieved in a home-made biodetection device. The concentration x dependence of output voltage difference |ΔV| between with and without magnetic labels, exhibits nonlinear futures, which undergoes two functions depending on the concentration region. For the low concentration region from 10 ng/mL to 10 μg/mL, a logarithmic relation of |ΔV|=26.3lgx+91.4 fits well, while for the high concentration region, a negative exponential function of |ΔV|=3113(1-e-x/250) describes the |ΔV|~x relation better. For the former, the "coffee ring" effect, formed during the solvent evaporation, was considered as the main reason for the nonlinear relation. While for the latter with high concentration, the overlap among the particles and the enhanced interaction of the magnetic dipole were responsible for the nonlinear |ΔV|~x relationship. Moreover, the calculated detectable concentration limit is agreed well with the experimental data.

Using the Internet for psychological research: personality testing on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Buchanan, T; Smith, J L

1999-02-01

The Internet is increasingly being used as a medium for psychological research. To assess the validity of such efforts, an electronic version of Gangestad & Snyder's (1985) revised self-monitoring questionnaire was placed at a site on the World Wide Web. In all, 963 responses were obtained through the Internet and these were compared with those from a group of 224 undergraduates who completed a paper-and-pencil version. Comparison of model fit indices obtained through confirmatory factor analyses indicated that the Internet-mediated version had similar psychometric properties to its conventional equivalent and compared favourably as a measure of self-monitoring. Reasons for possible superiority of Internet data are discussed. Results support the notion that Web-based personality assessment is possible, but stringent validation of test instruments is urged.

A genome-wide association meta-analysis on apolipoprotein A-IV concentrations

PubMed Central

Lamina, Claudia; Friedel, Salome; Coassin, Stefan; Rueedi, Rico; Yousri, Noha A.; Seppälä, Ilkka; Gieger, Christian; Schönherr, Sebastian; Forer, Lukas; Erhart, Gertraud; Kollerits, Barbara; Marques-Vidal, Pedro; Ried, Janina; Waeber, Gerard; Bergmann, Sven; Dähnhardt, Doreen; Stöckl, Andrea; Kiechl, Stefan; Raitakari, Olli T.; Kähönen, Mika; Willeit, Johann; Kedenko, Ludmilla; Paulweber, Bernhard; Peters, Annette; Meitinger, Thomas; Strauch, Konstantin; Study Group, KORA; Lehtimäki, Terho; Hunt, Steven C.; Vollenweider, Peter; Kronenberg, Florian

2016-01-01

Apolipoprotein A-IV (apoA-IV) is a major component of HDL and chylomicron particles and is involved in reverse cholesterol transport. It is an early marker of impaired renal function. We aimed to identify genetic loci associated with apoA-IV concentrations and to investigate relationships with known susceptibility loci for kidney function and lipids. A genome-wide association meta-analysis on apoA-IV concentrations was conducted in five population-based cohorts (n = 13,813) followed by two additional replication studies (n = 2,267) including approximately 10 M SNPs. Three independent SNPs from two genomic regions were significantly associated with apoA-IV concentrations: rs1729407 near APOA4 (P = 6.77 × 10 − 44), rs5104 in APOA4 (P = 1.79 × 10−24) and rs4241819 in KLKB1 (P = 5.6 × 10−14). Additionally, a look-up of the replicated SNPs in downloadable GWAS meta-analysis results was performed on kidney function (defined by eGFR), HDL-cholesterol and triglycerides. From these three SNPs mentioned above, only rs1729407 showed an association with HDL-cholesterol (P = 7.1 × 10 − 07). Moreover, weighted SNP-scores were built involving known susceptibility loci for the aforementioned traits (53, 70 and 38 SNPs, respectively) and were associated with apoA-IV concentrations. This analysis revealed a significant and an inverse association for kidney function with apoA-IV concentrations (P = 5.5 × 10−05). Furthermore, an increase of triglyceride-increasing alleles was found to decrease apoA-IV concentrations (P = 0.0078). In summary, we identified two independent SNPs located in or next the APOA4 gene and one SNP in KLKB1. The association of KLKB1 with apoA-IV suggests an involvement of apoA-IV in renal metabolism and/or an interaction within HDL particles. Analyses of SNP-scores indicate potential causal effects of kidney function and by lesser extent triglycerides on apoA-IV concentrations. PMID

Interference between face and non-face domains of perceptual expertise: a replication and extension

PubMed Central

Curby, Kim M.; Gauthier, Isabel

2014-01-01

As car expertise increases, so does interference between the visual processing of faces and that of cars; this suggests performance trade-offs across domains of real-world expertise. Such interference between expert domains has been previously revealed in a relatively complex design, interleaving 2-back part-judgment task with faces and cars (Gauthier et al., 2003). However, the basis of this interference is unclear. Experiment 1A replicated the finding of interference between faces and cars, as a function of car expertise. Experiments 1B and 2 investigated the mechanisms underlying this effect by (1) providing baseline measures of performance and (2) assessing the specificity of this interference effect. Our findings support the presence of expertise-dependent interference between face and non-face domains of expertise. However, surprisingly, it is in the condition where faces are processed among cars with a disrupted configuration where expertise has a greater influence on faces. This finding highlights how expertise-related processing changes also occur for transformed objects of expertise and that such changes can also drive interference across domains of expertise. PMID:25346702

ePlant and the 3D data display initiative: integrative systems biology on the world wide web.

PubMed

Fucile, Geoffrey; Di Biase, David; Nahal, Hardeep; La, Garon; Khodabandeh, Shokoufeh; Chen, Yani; Easley, Kante; Christendat, Dinesh; Kelley, Lawrence; Provart, Nicholas J

2011-01-10

Visualization tools for biological data are often limited in their ability to interactively integrate data at multiple scales. These computational tools are also typically limited by two-dimensional displays and programmatic implementations that require separate configurations for each of the user's computing devices and recompilation for functional expansion. Towards overcoming these limitations we have developed "ePlant" (http://bar.utoronto.ca/eplant) - a suite of open-source world wide web-based tools for the visualization of large-scale data sets from the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana. These tools display data spanning multiple biological scales on interactive three-dimensional models. Currently, ePlant consists of the following modules: a sequence conservation explorer that includes homology relationships and single nucleotide polymorphism data, a protein structure model explorer, a molecular interaction network explorer, a gene product subcellular localization explorer, and a gene expression pattern explorer. The ePlant's protein structure explorer module represents experimentally determined and theoretical structures covering >70% of the Arabidopsis proteome. The ePlant framework is accessed entirely through a web browser, and is therefore platform-independent. It can be applied to any model organism. To facilitate the development of three-dimensional displays of biological data on the world wide web we have established the "3D Data Display Initiative" (http://3ddi.org).

Analyses of odours from concentrated animal feeding operations: A review

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Guffanti, P.; Pifferi, V.; Falciola, L.; Ferrante, V.

2018-02-01

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) are widely present all over the world due to the high population demand for food and products of animal origin. However, they have generated several environmental concerns, including odour nuisance, which affects people health and quality of life. Odours from livestock are a very complex mixtures of molecules and their analytical investigation is highly demanding. Many works have been published regarding the study of odours from CAFOs, using different techniques and technologies to face the issue. Thus, the aim of this review paper is to summarize all the ways to study odours from CAFOs, starting from the sampling methods and then treating in general the principles of Dynamic Olfactometry, Gas Chromatography coupled with Mass Spectrometry and Electronic Noses. Finally, a deep literature summary of Gas Chromatography coupled with Mass Spectrometry and Electronic Noses applied to odours coming from poultry, dairy and swine feeding operations is reported. This work aims to make some order in this field and it wants to help future researchers to deal with this environmental problem, constituting a state-of-the-art in this field.

Medical knowledge packages and their integration into health-care information systems and the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Adlassnig, Klaus-Peter; Rappelsberger, Andrea

2008-01-01

Software-based medical knowledge packages (MKPs) are packages of highly structured medical knowledge that can be integrated into various health-care information systems or the World Wide Web. They have been established to provide different forms of clinical decision support such as textual interpretation of combinations of laboratory rest results, generating diagnostic hypotheses as well as confirmed and excluded diagnoses to support differential diagnosis in internal medicine, or for early identification and automatic monitoring of hospital-acquired infections. Technically, an MKP may consist of a number of inter-connected Arden Medical Logic Modules. Several MKPs have been integrated thus far into hospital, laboratory, and departmental information systems. This has resulted in useful and widely accepted software-based clinical decision support for the benefit of the patient, the physician, and the organization funding the health care system.

Comparison of the BCI Performance between the Semitransparent Face Pattern and the Traditional Face Pattern.

PubMed

Cheng, Jiao; Jin, Jing; Wang, Xingyu

2017-01-01

Brain-computer interface (BCI) systems allow users to communicate with the external world by recognizing the brain activity without the assistance of the peripheral motor nervous system. P300-based BCI is one of the most common used BCI systems that can obtain high classification accuracy and information transfer rate (ITR). Face stimuli can result in large event-related potentials and improve the performance of P300-based BCI. However, previous studies on face stimuli focused mainly on the effect of various face types (i.e., face expression, face familiarity, and multifaces) on the BCI performance. Studies on the influence of face transparency differences are scarce. Therefore, we investigated the effect of semitransparent face pattern (STF-P) (the subject could see the target character when the stimuli were flashed) and traditional face pattern (F-P) (the subject could not see the target character when the stimuli were flashed) on the BCI performance from the transparency perspective. Results showed that STF-P obtained significantly higher classification accuracy and ITR than those of F-P ( p < 0.05).

Genome-Wide Meta-Analyses of Plasma Renin Activity and Concentration Reveal Association with the Kininogen 1 and Prekallikrein Genes

PubMed Central

Lieb, Wolfgang; Chen, Ming-Huei; Teumer, Alexander; de Boer, Rudolf A.; Lin, Honghuang; Fox, Ervin R.; Musani, Solomon K.; Wilson, James G.; Wang, Thomas J.; Völzke, Henry; Petersen, Ann-Kristin; Meisinger, Christine; Nauck, Matthias; Schlesinger, Sabrina; Li, Yong; Menard, Jöel; Hercberg, Serge; Wichmann, H.-Erich; Völker, Uwe; Rawal, Rajesh; Bidlingmaier, Martin; Hannemann, Anke; Dörr, Marcus; Rettig, Rainer; van Gilst, Wiek H.; van Veldhuisen, Dirk J.; Bakker, Stephan J.L.; Navis, Gerjan; Wallaschofski, Henri; Meneton, Pierre; van der Harst, Pim; Reincke, Martin; Vasan, Ramachandran S.; Consortium, CKDGen

2015-01-01

Background The renin-angiotensin-aldosterone-system (RAAS) is critical for regulation of blood pressure and fluid balance and influences cardiovascular remodeling. Dysregulation of the RAAS contributes to cardiovascular and renal morbidity. The genetic architecture of circulating RAAS components is incompletely understood. Methods and Results We meta-analyzed genome-wide association data for plasma renin activity (n=5,275), plasma renin concentrations (n=8,014) and circulating aldosterone (n=13,289) from up to four population-based cohorts of European and European-American ancestry, and assessed replication of the top results in an independent sample (n=6,487). Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in two independent loci displayed associations with plasma renin activity atgenome-wide significance (p<5×10-8). A third locus was close to this threshold (rs4253311 in kallikrein B [KLKB1], p=5.5×10-8). Two of these loci replicated in an independent sample for both plasma renin and aldosterone concentrations (SNP rs5030062 in kininogen 1 [KNG1]: p=0.001 for plasma renin, p=0.024 for plasma aldosterone concentration; rs4253311 with p<0.001 for both plasma renin and aldosterone concentration). SNPs in the NEBL gene reached genome-wide significance for plasma renin concentration in the discovery sample (top SNP rs3915911, p= 8.81×10-9), but did not replicate (p=0.81). No locus reached genome-wide significance for aldosterone. SNPs rs5030062 and rs4253311 were not related to blood pressure or renal traits; in a companion study, variants in the kallikrein B locus were associated with B-type natriuretic peptide concentrations in African-Americans. Conclusions We identified two genetic loci (kininogen 1 and kallikrein B) influencing key components of the RAAS, consistent with the close interrelation between the kallikrein-kinin system and the RAAS. PMID:25477429

Face recognition from unconstrained three-dimensional face images using multitask sparse representation

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bentaieb, Samia; Ouamri, Abdelaziz; Nait-Ali, Amine; Keche, Mokhtar

2018-01-01

We propose and evaluate a three-dimensional (3D) face recognition approach that applies the speeded up robust feature (SURF) algorithm to the depth representation of shape index map, under real-world conditions, using only a single gallery sample for each subject. First, the 3D scans are preprocessed, then SURF is applied on the shape index map to find interest points and their descriptors. Each 3D face scan is represented by keypoints descriptors, and a large dictionary is built from all the gallery descriptors. At the recognition step, descriptors of a probe face scan are sparsely represented by the dictionary. A multitask sparse representation classification is used to determine the identity of each probe face. The feasibility of the approach that uses the SURF algorithm on the shape index map for face identification/authentication is checked through an experimental investigation conducted on Bosphorus, University of Milano Bicocca, and CASIA 3D datasets. It achieves an overall rank one recognition rate of 97.75%, 80.85%, and 95.12%, respectively, on these datasets.

The Morphometrics of “Masculinity” in Human Faces

PubMed Central

Mitteroecker, Philipp; Windhager, Sonja; Müller, Gerd B.; Schaefer, Katrin

2015-01-01

In studies of social inference and human mate preference, a wide but inconsistent array of tools for computing facial masculinity has been devised. Several of these approaches implicitly assumed that the individual expression of sexually dimorphic shape features, which we refer to as maleness, resembles facial shape features perceived as masculine. We outline a morphometric strategy for estimating separately the face shape patterns that underlie perceived masculinity and maleness, and for computing individual scores for these shape patterns. We further show how faces with different degrees of masculinity or maleness can be constructed in a geometric morphometric framework. In an application of these methods to a set of human facial photographs, we found that shape features typically perceived as masculine are wide faces with a wide inter-orbital distance, a wide nose, thin lips, and a large and massive lower face. The individual expressions of this combination of shape features—the masculinity shape scores—were the best predictor of rated masculinity among the compared methods (r = 0.5). The shape features perceived as masculine only partly resembled the average face shape difference between males and females (sexual dimorphism). Discriminant functions and Procrustes distances to the female mean shape were poor predictors of perceived masculinity. PMID:25671667

Health information seeking and the World Wide Web: an uncertainty management perspective.

PubMed

Rains, Stephen A

2014-01-01

Uncertainty management theory was applied in the present study to offer one theoretical explanation for how individuals use the World Wide Web to acquire health information and to help better understand the implications of the Web for information seeking. The diversity of information sources available on the Web and potential to exert some control over the depth and breadth of one's information-acquisition effort is argued to facilitate uncertainty management. A total of 538 respondents completed a questionnaire about their uncertainty related to cancer prevention and information-seeking behavior. Consistent with study predictions, use of the Web for information seeking interacted with respondents' desired level of uncertainty to predict their actual level of uncertainty about cancer prevention. The results offer evidence that respondents who used the Web to search for cancer information were better able than were respondents who did not seek information to achieve a level of uncertainty commensurate with the level of uncertainty they desired.

Integrating DXplain into a clinical information system using the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Elhanan, G; Socratous, S A; Cimino, J J

1996-01-01

The World Wide Web(WWW) offers a cross-platform environment and standard protocols that enable integration of various applications available on the Internet. The authors use the Web to facilitate interaction between their Web-based Clinical Information System and a decision-support system-DXplain, at the Massachusetts General Hospital-using local architecture and Common Gateway Interface programs. The current application translates patients laboratory test results into DXplain's terms to generate diagnostic hypotheses. Two different access methods are utilized for this model; Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and TCP/IP function calls. While clinical aspects cannot be evaluated as yet, the model demonstrates the potential of Web-based applications for interaction and integration and how local architecture, with a controlled vocabulary server, can further facilitate such integration. This model serves to demonstrate some of the limitations of the current WWW technology and identifies issues such as control over Web resources and their utilization and liability issues as possible obstacles for further integration.

Science Education and the Challenges Facing Its Integration into the 21st Century School System in a Globalized World: A Case of Igbo Nation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ezeudu, F. O.; Nkokelonye, C. U.; Ezeudu, S. A.

2013-01-01

This paper is a study of historical foundations of science education in Igboland, its nature and scope as well as the challenges facing its integration into the 21st century school system in a globalized world. The authors found that there were many scientific activities in Igbo culture, but many problems hinder their integration into the basic…

Comparison of student outcomes and preferences in a traditional vs. World Wide Web-based baccalaureate nursing research course.

PubMed

Leasure, A R; Davis, L; Thievon, S L

2000-04-01

The purpose of this project was to compare student outcomes in an undergraduate research course taught using both World Wide Web-based distance learning technology and traditional pedagogy. Reasons given for enrolling in the traditional classroom section included the perception of increased opportunity for interaction, decreased opportunity to procrastinate, immediate feedback, and more meaningful learning activities. Reasons for selecting the Web group section included cost, convenience, and flexibility. Overall, there was no significant difference in examination scores between the two groups on the three multiple-choice examinations or for the course grades (t = -.96, P = .343). Students who reported that they were self-directed and had the ability to maintain their own pace and avoid procrastination were most suited to Web-based courses. The Web-based classes can help provide opportunities for methods of communication that are not traditionally nurtured in traditional classroom settings. Secondary benefits of the World Wide Web-based course were to increase student confidence with the computer, and introduce them to skills and opportunities they would not have had in the classroom. Additionally, over time and with practice, student's writing skills improved.

Students' Perceptions of the Effectiveness of the World Wide Web as a Research and Teaching Tool in Science Learning.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ng, Wan; Gunstone, Richard

2002-01-01

Investigates the use of the World Wide Web (WWW) as a research and teaching tool in promoting self-directed learning groups of 15-year-old students. Discusses the perceptions of students of the effectiveness of the WWW in assisting them with the construction of knowledge on photosynthesis and respiration. (Contains 33 references.) (Author/YDS)

AAS WorldWide Telescope: A Seamless, Cross-platform Data Visualization Engine for Astronomy Research, Education, and Democratizing Data

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Rosenfield, Philip; Fay, Jonathan; Gilchrist, Ronald K.; Cui, Chenzhou; Weigel, A. David; Robitaille, Thomas; Otor, Oderah Justin; Goodman, Alyssa

2018-05-01

The American Astronomical Society’s WorldWide Telescope (WWT) project enables terabytes of astronomical images, data, and stories to be viewed and shared among researchers, exhibited in science museums, projected into full-dome immersive planetariums and virtual reality headsets, and taught in classrooms, from middle school to college. We review the WWT ecosystem, how WWT has been used in the astronomical community, and comment on future directions.

Innovation in weight loss programs: a 3-dimensional virtual-world approach.

PubMed

Johnston, Jeanne D; Massey, Anne P; Devaneaux, Celeste A

2012-09-20

The rising trend in obesity calls for innovative weight loss programs. While behavioral-based face-to-face programs have proven to be the most effective, they are expensive and often inaccessible. Internet or Web-based weight loss programs have expanded reach but may lack qualities critical to weight loss and maintenance such as human interaction, social support, and engagement. In contrast to Web technologies, virtual reality technologies offer unique affordances as a behavioral intervention by directly supporting engagement and active learning. To explore the effectiveness of a virtual-world weight loss program relative to weight loss and behavior change. We collected data from overweight people (N = 54) participating in a face-to-face or a virtual-world weight loss program. Weight, body mass index (BMI), percentage weight change, and health behaviors (ie, weight loss self-efficacy, physical activity self-efficacy, self-reported physical activity, and fruit and vegetable consumption) were assessed before and after the 12-week program. Repeated measures analysis was used to detect differences between groups and across time. A total of 54 participants with a BMI of 32 (SD 6.05) kg/m(2)enrolled in the study, with a 13% dropout rate for each group (virtual world group: 5/38; face-to-face group: 3/24). Both groups lost a significant amount of weight (virtual world: 3.9 kg, P < .001; face-to-face: 2.8 kg, P = .002); however, no significant differences between groups were detected (P = .29). Compared with baseline, the virtual-world group lost an average of 4.2%, with 33% (11/33) of the participants losing a clinically significant (≥5%) amount of baseline weight. The face-to-face group lost an average of 3.0% of their baseline weight, with 29% (6/21) losing a clinically significant amount. We detected a significant group × time interaction for moderate (P = .006) and vigorous physical activity (P = .008), physical activity self-efficacy (P = .04), fruit and vegetable

Genome-wide association analyses identify 18 new loci associated with serum urate concentrations

PubMed Central

Köttgen, Anna; Albrecht, Eva; Teumer, Alexander; Vitart, Veronique; Krumsiek, Jan; Hundertmark, Claudia; Pistis, Giorgio; Ruggiero, Daniela; O’Seaghdha, Conall M; Haller, Toomas; Yang, Qiong; Tanaka, Toshiko; Johnson, Andrew D; Kutalik, Zoltán; Smith, Albert V; Shi, Julia; Struchalin, Maksim; Middelberg, Rita P S; Brown, Morris J; Gaffo, Angelo L; Pirastu, Nicola; Li, Guo; Hayward, Caroline; Zemunik, Tatijana; Huffman, Jennifer; Yengo, Loic; Zhao, Jing Hua; Demirkan, Ayse; Feitosa, Mary F; Liu, Xuan; Malerba, Giovanni; Lopez, Lorna M; van der Harst, Pim; Li, Xinzhong; Kleber, Marcus E; Hicks, Andrew A; Nolte, Ilja M; Johansson, Asa; Murgia, Federico; Wild, Sarah H; Bakker, Stephan J L; Peden, John F; Dehghan, Abbas; Steri, Maristella; Tenesa, Albert; Lagou, Vasiliki; Salo, Perttu; Mangino, Massimo; Rose, Lynda M; Lehtimäki, Terho; Woodward, Owen M; Okada, Yukinori; Tin, Adrienne; Müller, Christian; Oldmeadow, Christopher; Putku, Margus; Czamara, Darina; Kraft, Peter; Frogheri, Laura; Thun, Gian Andri; Grotevendt, Anne; Gislason, Gauti Kjartan; Harris, Tamara B; Launer, Lenore J; McArdle, Patrick; Shuldiner, Alan R; Boerwinkle, Eric; Coresh, Josef; Schmidt, Helena; Schallert, Michael; Martin, Nicholas G; Montgomery, Grant W; Kubo, Michiaki; Nakamura, Yusuke; Tanaka, Toshihiro; Munroe, Patricia B; Samani, Nilesh J; Jacobs, David R; Liu, Kiang; D’Adamo, Pio; Ulivi, Sheila; Rotter, Jerome I; Psaty, Bruce M; Vollenweider, Peter; Waeber, Gerard; Campbell, Susan; Devuyst, Olivier; Navarro, Pau; Kolcic, Ivana; Hastie, Nicholas; Balkau, Beverley; Froguel, Philippe; Esko, Tõnu; Salumets, Andres; Khaw, Kay Tee; Langenberg, Claudia; Wareham, Nicholas J; Isaacs, Aaron; Kraja, Aldi; Zhang, Qunyuan; Wild, Philipp S; Scott, Rodney J; Holliday, Elizabeth G; Org, Elin; Viigimaa, Margus; Bandinelli, Stefania; Metter, Jeffrey E; Lupo, Antonio; Trabetti, Elisabetta; Sorice, Rossella; Döring, Angela; Lattka, Eva; Strauch, Konstantin; Theis, Fabian; Waldenberger, Melanie; Wichmann, H-Erich; Davies, Gail; Gow, Alan J; Bruinenberg, Marcel; Study, LifeLines Cohort; Stolk, Ronald P; Kooner, Jaspal S; Zhang, Weihua; Winkelmann, Bernhard R; Boehm, Bernhard O; Lucae, Susanne; Penninx, Brenda W; Smit, Johannes H; Curhan, Gary; Mudgal, Poorva; Plenge, Robert M; Portas, Laura; Persico, Ivana; Kirin, Mirna; Wilson, James F; Leach, Irene Mateo; van Gilst, Wiek H; Goel, Anuj; Ongen, Halit; Hofman, Albert; Rivadeneira, Fernando; Uitterlinden, Andre G; Imboden, Medea; von Eckardstein, Arnold; Cucca, Francesco; Nagaraja, Ramaiah; Piras, Maria Grazia; Nauck, Matthias; Schurmann, Claudia; Budde, Kathrin; Ernst, Florian; Farrington, Susan M; Theodoratou, Evropi; Prokopenko, Inga; Stumvoll, Michael; Jula, Antti; Perola, Markus; Salomaa, Veikko; Shin, So-Youn; Spector, Tim D; Sala, Cinzia; Ridker, Paul M; Kähönen, Mika; Viikari, Jorma; Hengstenberg, Christian; Nelson, Christopher P; Consortium, CARDIoGRAM; Consortium, DIAGRAM; Consortium, ICBP; Consortium, MAGIC; Meschia, James F; Nalls, Michael A; Sharma, Pankaj; Singleton, Andrew B; Kamatani, Naoyuki; Zeller, Tanja; Burnier, Michel; Attia, John; Laan, Maris; Klopp, Norman; Hillege, Hans L; Kloiber, Stefan; Choi, Hyon; Pirastu, Mario; Tore, Silvia; Probst-Hensch, Nicole M; Völzke, Henry; Gudnason, Vilmundur; Parsa, Afshin; Schmidt, Reinhold; Whitfield, John B; Fornage, Myriam; Gasparini, Paolo; Siscovick, David S; Polašek, Ozren; Campbell, Harry; Rudan, Igor; Bouatia-Naji, Nabila; Metspalu, Andres; Loos, Ruth J F; van Duijn, Cornelia M; Borecki, Ingrid B; Ferrucci, Luigi; Gambaro, Giovanni; Deary, Ian J; Wolffenbuttel, Bruce H R; Chambers, John C; März, Winfried; Pramstaller, Peter P; Snieder, Harold; Gyllensten, Ulf; Wright, Alan F; Navis, Gerjan; Watkins, Hugh; Witteman, Jacqueline C M; Sanna, Serena; Schipf, Sabine; Dunlop, Malcolm G; Tönjes, Anke; Ripatti, Samuli; Soranzo, Nicole; Toniolo, Daniela; Chasman, Daniel I; Raitakari, Olli; Kao, W H Linda; Ciullo, Marina; Fox, Caroline S; Caulfield, Mark; Bochud, Murielle; Gieger, Christian

2013-01-01

Elevated serum urate concentrations can cause gout, a prevalent and painful inflammatory arthritis. By combining data from >140,000 individuals of European ancestry within the Global Urate Genetics Consortium (GUGC), we identified and replicated 28 genome-wide significant loci in association with serum urate concentrations (18 new regions in or near TRIM46, INHBB, SFMBT1, TMEM171, VEGFA, BAZ1B, PRKAG2, STC1, HNF4G, A1CF, ATXN2, UBE2Q2, IGF1R, NFAT5, MAF, HLF, ACVR1B-ACVRL1 and B3GNT4). Associations for many of the loci were of similar magnitude in individuals of non-European ancestry. We further characterized these loci for associations with gout, transcript expression and the fractional excretion of urate. Network analyses implicate the inhibins-activins signaling pathways and glucose metabolism in systemic urate control. New candidate genes for serum urate concentration highlight the importance of metabolic control of urate production and excretion, which may have implications for the treatment and prevention of gout. PMID:23263486

Student Performance in Online and Face-to-Face Microeconomics: Evidence from Adult Learners

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Medcalfe, Simon

2009-01-01

There have been few studies comparing student performance in online and face-to-face economics courses. Those studies that have been undertaken have concentrated on traditional students (18- to 22-year-olds). This paper examines student outcomes in an undergraduate course in microeconomics taught to non-traditional students (average age is 33…

An Exploratory Survey of Digital Libraries on the World Wide Web: Art and Literature of the Early Italian Renaissance.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McKibben, Suzanne J.

This study assessed the ongoing development of digital libraries (DLs) on the World Wide Web. DLs of art and literature were surveyed for selected works from the early Italian Renaissance in order to gain insight into the current trends prevalent throughout the larger population of DLs. The following artists and authors were selected for study:…

What's in a crowd? Analysis of face-to-face behavioral networks.

PubMed

Isella, Lorenzo; Stehlé, Juliette; Barrat, Alain; Cattuto, Ciro; Pinton, Jean-François; Van den Broeck, Wouter

2011-02-21

The availability of new data sources on human mobility is opening new avenues for investigating the interplay of social networks, human mobility and dynamical processes such as epidemic spreading. Here we analyze data on the time-resolved face-to-face proximity of individuals in large-scale real-world scenarios. We compare two settings with very different properties, a scientific conference and a long-running museum exhibition. We track the behavioral networks of face-to-face proximity, and characterize them from both a static and a dynamic point of view, exposing differences and similarities. We use our data to investigate the dynamics of a susceptible-infected model for epidemic spreading that unfolds on the dynamical networks of human proximity. The spreading patterns are markedly different for the conference and the museum case, and they are strongly impacted by the causal structure of the network data. A deeper study of the spreading paths shows that the mere knowledge of static aggregated networks would lead to erroneous conclusions about the transmission paths on the dynamical networks. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sorption of organic cations onto silica surfaces over a wide concentration range of competing electrolytes.

PubMed

Kutzner, Susann; Schaffer, Mario; Licha, Tobias; Worch, Eckhard; Börnick, Hilmar

2016-12-15

The fundamental understanding of organic cation-solid phase interactions is essential for improved predictions of the transport and ultimate environmental fates of widely used substances (e.g., pharmaceutical compounds) in the aquatic environment. We report sorption experiments of two cationic model compounds using two silica gels and a natural aquifer sediment. The sorbents were extensively characterized and the results of surface titrations under various background electrolyte concentrations were discussed. The salt dependency of sorption was systematically studied in batch experiments over a wide concentration range (five orders of magnitude) of inorganic ions in order to examine the influence of increasing competition on the sorption of organic cations. The organic cation uptake followed the Freundlich isotherm model and the sorption capacity decreases with an increase in the electrolyte concentration due to the underlying cation exchange processes. However, the sorption recovers considerably at high ionic strength (I>1M). To our knowledge, this effect has not been observed before and appears to be independent from the sorbent characteristics and sorbate structure. Furthermore, the recovery of sorption was attributed to specific, non-ionic interactions and a connection between the sorption coefficient and activity coefficient of the medium is presumed. Eventually, the reasons for the differing sorption affinities of both sorbates are discussed. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Individual differences in cortical face selectivity predict behavioral performance in face recognition

PubMed Central

Huang, Lijie; Song, Yiying; Li, Jingguang; Zhen, Zonglei; Yang, Zetian; Liu, Jia

2014-01-01

In functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, object selectivity is defined as a higher neural response to an object category than other object categories. Importantly, object selectivity is widely considered as a neural signature of a functionally-specialized area in processing its preferred object category in the human brain. However, the behavioral significance of the object selectivity remains unclear. In the present study, we used the individual differences approach to correlate participants' face selectivity in the face-selective regions with their behavioral performance in face recognition measured outside the scanner in a large sample of healthy adults. Face selectivity was defined as the z score of activation with the contrast of faces vs. non-face objects, and the face recognition ability was indexed as the normalized residual of the accuracy in recognizing previously-learned faces after regressing out that for non-face objects in an old/new memory task. We found that the participants with higher face selectivity in the fusiform face area (FFA) and the occipital face area (OFA), but not in the posterior part of the superior temporal sulcus (pSTS), possessed higher face recognition ability. Importantly, the association of face selectivity in the FFA and face recognition ability cannot be accounted for by FFA response to objects or behavioral performance in object recognition, suggesting that the association is domain-specific. Finally, the association is reliable, confirmed by the replication from another independent participant group. In sum, our finding provides empirical evidence on the validity of using object selectivity as a neural signature in defining object-selective regions in the human brain. PMID:25071513

The face of female dominance: Women with dominant faces have lower cortisol.

PubMed

Gonzalez-Santoyo, Isaac; Wheatley, John R; Welling, Lisa L M; Cárdenas, Rodrigo A; Jimenez-Trejo, Francisco; Dawood, Khytam; Puts, David A

2015-05-01

The human face displays a wealth of information, including information about dominance and fecundity. Dominance and fecundity are also associated with lower concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol, suggesting that cortisol may negatively predict facial dominance and attractiveness. We digitally photographed 61 women's faces, had these images rated by men and women for dominance, attractiveness, and femininity, and explored relationships between these perceptions and women's salivary cortisol concentrations. In a first study, we found that women with more dominant-appearing, but not more attractive, faces had lower cortisol levels. These associations were not due to age, ethnicity, time since waking, testosterone, or its interaction with cortisol. In a second study, composite images of women with low cortisol were perceived as more dominant than those of women with high cortisol significantly more often than chance by two samples of viewers, with a similar but non-significant trend in a third sample. However, data on perceptions of attractiveness were mixed; low-cortisol images were viewed as more attractive by two samples of US viewers and as less attractive by a sample of Mexican viewers. Our results suggest that having a more dominant-appearing face may be associated with lower stress and hence lower cortisol in women, and provide further evidence regarding the information content of the human face. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Wide-range particle characterization and elemental concentration in Beijing aerosol during the 2013 Spring Festival.

PubMed

Jing, Hui; Li, Yu-Feng; Zhao, Jiating; Li, Bai; Sun, Jialong; Chen, Rui; Gao, Yuxi; Chen, Chunying

2014-09-01

The number and mass concentration, size distribution, and the concentration of 16 elements were studied in aerosol samples during the Spring Festival celebrations in 2013 in Beijing, China. Both the number and mass concentration increased sharply in a wide range from 10 nm to 10 μm during the firecrackers and fireworks activities. The prominent increase of the number concentration was in 50 nm-500 nm with a peak of 1.7 × 10(5)/cm(3) at 150 nm, which is 8 times higher than that after 1.5 h. The highest mass concentration was in 320-560 nm, which is 4 times higher than the control. K, Mg, Sr, Ba and Pb increased sharply during the firework activities in PM10. Although the aerosol emission from firework activities is a short-term air quality degradation event, there may be a substantial hazard arising from the chemical composition of the emitted particles. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Face-blind for other-race faces: Individual differences in other-race recognition impairments.

PubMed

Wan, Lulu; Crookes, Kate; Dawel, Amy; Pidcock, Madeleine; Hall, Ashleigh; McKone, Elinor

2017-01-01

We report the existence of a previously undescribed group of people, namely individuals who are so poor at recognition of other-race faces that they meet criteria for clinical-level impairment (i.e., they are "face-blind" for other-race faces). Testing 550 participants, and using the well-validated Cambridge Face Memory Test for diagnosing face blindness, results show the rate of other-race face blindness to be nontrivial, specifically 8.1% of Caucasians and Asians raised in majority own-race countries. Results also show risk factors for other-race face blindness to include: a lack of interracial contact; and being at the lower end of the normal range of general face recognition ability (i.e., even for own-race faces); but not applying less individuating effort to other-race than own-race faces. Findings provide a potential resolution of contradictory evidence concerning the importance of the other-race effect (ORE), by explaining how it is possible for the mean ORE to be modest in size (suggesting a genuine but minor problem), and simultaneously for individuals to suffer major functional consequences in the real world (e.g., eyewitness misidentification of other-race offenders leading to wrongful imprisonment). Findings imply that, in legal settings, evaluating an eyewitness's chance of having made an other-race misidentification requires information about the underlying face recognition abilities of the individual witness. Additionally, analogy with prosopagnosia (inability to recognize even own-race faces) suggests everyday social interactions with other-race people, such as those between colleagues in the workplace, will be seriously impacted by the ORE in some people. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Analyzing luminescent solar concentrators with front-facing photovoltaic cells using weighted Monte Carlo ray tracing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Woei Leow, Shin; Corrado, Carley; Osborn, Melissa; Isaacson, Michael; Alers, Glenn; Carter, Sue A.

2013-06-01

Luminescent solar concentrators (LSC) collect ambient light from a broad range of angles and concentrate the captured light onto photovoltaic (PV) cells. LSCs with front-facing cells collect direct and indirect sunlight ensuring a gain factor greater than one. The flexible placement and percentage coverage of PV cells on the LSC panel allow for layout adjustments to be made in order to balance re-absorption losses and the level of light concentration desired. A weighted Monte Carlo ray tracing program was developed to study the transport of photons and loss mechanisms in the LSC to aid in design optimization. The program imports measured absorption/emission spectra of an organic luminescent dye (LR305), the transmission coefficient, and refractive index of acrylic as parameters that describe the system. Simulations suggest that for LR305, 8-10 cm of luminescent material surrounding the PV cell yields the highest increase in power gain per unit area of LSC added, thereby determining the ideal spacing between PV cells in the panel. For rectangular PV cells, results indicate that for each centimeter of PV cell width, an additional increase of 0.15 mm to the waveguide thickness is required to efficiently transport photon collected by the LSC to the PV cell with minimal loss.

Innovation in Weight Loss Programs: A 3-Dimensional Virtual-World Approach

PubMed Central

Massey, Anne P; DeVaneaux, Celeste A

2012-01-01

Background The rising trend in obesity calls for innovative weight loss programs. While behavioral-based face-to-face programs have proven to be the most effective, they are expensive and often inaccessible. Internet or Web-based weight loss programs have expanded reach but may lack qualities critical to weight loss and maintenance such as human interaction, social support, and engagement. In contrast to Web technologies, virtual reality technologies offer unique affordances as a behavioral intervention by directly supporting engagement and active learning. Objective To explore the effectiveness of a virtual-world weight loss program relative to weight loss and behavior change. Methods We collected data from overweight people (N = 54) participating in a face-to-face or a virtual-world weight loss program. Weight, body mass index (BMI), percentage weight change, and health behaviors (ie, weight loss self-efficacy, physical activity self-efficacy, self-reported physical activity, and fruit and vegetable consumption) were assessed before and after the 12-week program. Repeated measures analysis was used to detect differences between groups and across time. Results A total of 54 participants with a BMI of 32 (SD 6.05) kg/m2 enrolled in the study, with a 13% dropout rate for each group (virtual world group: 5/38; face-to-face group: 3/24). Both groups lost a significant amount of weight (virtual world: 3.9 kg, P < .001; face-to-face: 2.8 kg, P = .002); however, no significant differences between groups were detected (P = .29). Compared with baseline, the virtual-world group lost an average of 4.2%, with 33% (11/33) of the participants losing a clinically significant (≥5%) amount of baseline weight. The face-to-face group lost an average of 3.0% of their baseline weight, with 29% (6/21) losing a clinically significant amount. We detected a significant group × time interaction for moderate (P = .006) and vigorous physical activity (P = .008), physical activity self

The World Wide Web: a review of an emerging internet-based technology for the distribution of biomedical information.

PubMed Central

Lowe, H J; Lomax, E C; Polonkey, S E

1996-01-01

The Internet is rapidly evolving from a resource used primarily by the research community to a true global information network offering a wide range of databases and services. This evolution presents many opportunities for improved access to biomedical information, but Internet-based resources have often been difficult for the non-expert to develop and use. The World Wide Web (WWW) supports an inexpensive, easy-to-use, cross-platform, graphic interface to the Internet that may radically alter the way we retrieve and disseminate medical data. This paper summarizes the Internet and hypertext origins of the WWW, reviews WWW-specific technologies, and describes current and future applications of this technology in medicine and medical informatics. The paper also includes an appendix of useful biomedical WWW servers. PMID:8750386

Osmotic potential calculations of inorganic and organic aqueous solutions over wide solute concentration levels and temperatures.

PubMed

Cochrane, T T; Cochrane, T A

2016-01-01

To demonstrate that the authors' new "aqueous solution vs pure water" equation to calculate osmotic potential may be used to calculate the osmotic potentials of inorganic and organic aqueous solutions over wide ranges of solute concentrations and temperatures. Currently, the osmotic potentials of solutions used for medical purposes are calculated from equations based on the thermodynamics of the gas laws which are only accurate at low temperature and solute concentration levels. Some solutions used in medicine may need their osmotic potentials calculated more accurately to take into account solute concentrations and temperatures. The authors experimented with their new equation for calculating the osmotic potentials of inorganic and organic aqueous solutions up to and beyond body temperatures by adjusting three of its factors; (a) the volume property of pure water, (b) the number of "free" water molecules per unit volume of solution, "Nf," and (c) the "t" factor expressing the cooperative structural relaxation time of pure water at given temperatures. Adequate information on the volume property of pure water at different temperatures is available in the literature. However, as little information on the relative densities of inorganic and organic solutions, respectively, at varying temperatures needed to calculate Nf was available, provisional equations were formulated to approximate values. Those values together with tentative t values for different temperatures chosen from values calculated by different workers were substituted into the authors' equation to demonstrate how osmotic potentials could be estimated over temperatures up to and beyond bodily temperatures. The provisional equations formulated to calculate Nf, the number of free water molecules per unit volume of inorganic and organic solute solutions, respectively, over wide concentration ranges compared well with the calculations of Nf using recorded relative density data at 20 °C. They were

A World Wide Web-based antimicrobial stewardship program improves efficiency, communication, and user satisfaction and reduces cost in a tertiary care pediatric medical center.

PubMed

Agwu, Allison L; Lee, Carlton K K; Jain, Sanjay K; Murray, Kara L; Topolski, Jason; Miller, Robert E; Townsend, Timothy; Lehmann, Christoph U

2008-09-15

Antimicrobial stewardship programs aim to reduce inappropriate hospital antimicrobial use. At the Johns Hopkins Children's Medical and Surgical Center (Baltimore, MD), we implemented a World Wide Web-based antimicrobial restriction program to address problems with the existing restriction program. A user survey identified opportunities for improvement of an existing antimicrobial restriction program and resulted in subsequent design, implementation, and evaluation of a World Wide Web-based antimicrobial restriction program at a 175-bed, tertiary care pediatric teaching hospital. The program provided automated clinical decision support, facilitated approval, and enhanced real-time communication among prescribers, pharmacists, and pediatric infectious diseases fellows. Approval status, duration, and rationale; missing request notifications; and expiring approvals were stored in a database that is accessible via a secure Intranet site. Before and after implementation of the program, user satisfaction, reports of missed and/or delayed doses, antimicrobial dispensing times, and cost were evaluated. After implementation of the program, there was a $370,069 reduction in projected annual cost associated with restricted antimicrobial use and an 11.6% reduction in the number of dispensed doses. User satisfaction increased from 22% to 68% and from 13% to 69% among prescribers and pharmacists, respectively. There were 21% and 32% reductions in the number of prescriber reports of missed and delayed doses, respectively, and there was a 37% reduction in the number of pharmacist reports of delayed approvals; measured dispensing times were unchanged (P = .24). In addition, 40% fewer restricted antimicrobial-related phone calls were noted by the pharmacy. The World Wide Web-based antimicrobial approval program led to improved communication, more-efficient antimicrobial administration, increased user satisfaction, and significant cost savings. Integrated tools, such as this World

Wildfire contribution to world-wide desertification.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Neary, D.; Wittenberg, L.; Bautista, S.; Ffolliott, P.

2009-04-01

Wildfire is a natural phenomenon that began with the development of terrestrial vegetation in a lightning-filled atmosphere. Sediments from the Carboniferous Period (307-359 million years before the present) contain evidence of charcoal from post-fire ash slurry flows. As human populations developed in the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs, mankind transformed fire into one of its oldest tools. Human and natural ignited fires from lightning altered and steered the trajectories of ecosystem development in most parts of the world. Humans are now the primary source of forest and grass fire ignitions throughout the world. As human populations have increased and industrialized in the past two centuries, fire ignitions and burned areas have increased due to both sheer numbers of people and anthropogenic changes in the global climate. Recent scientific findings have bolstered the hypothesis that climate change is resulting in fire seasons starting earlier, lasting longer, burning greater areas, and being more severe Computer models point to the Western U.S., Mediterranean nations and Brazil as "hot spots" that will get extremes at their worst. The climatic change to drier and warmer conditions has the potential to aggravate wildfire conditions, resulting in burning over longer seasons, larger areas of vegetation conflagration, and higher fire severities. Wildfire is now driving desertification in some of the forest lands in the western United States. The areas of wildfire in the Southwest USA have increased dramatically in the past two decades from <10,000 ha yr-1 in the early 20th Century to over 230,000 ha yr-1 in the first decade of the 21st Century. Individual wildfires are now larger and produce higher severity burns than in the past. A combination of natural drought, climate change, excessive fuel loads, and increased ignition sources have produced the perfect conditions for fire-induced desertification. Portugal suffered the worst and second worst wildfire seasons in

Face Recognition by Metropolitan Police Super-Recognisers

PubMed Central

Robertson, David J.; Noyes, Eilidh; Dowsett, Andrew J.; Jenkins, Rob; Burton, A. Mike

2016-01-01

Face recognition is used to prove identity across a wide variety of settings. Despite this, research consistently shows that people are typically rather poor at matching faces to photos. Some professional groups, such as police and passport officers, have been shown to perform just as poorly as the general public on standard tests of face recognition. However, face recognition skills are subject to wide individual variation, with some people showing exceptional ability—a group that has come to be known as ‘super-recognisers’. The Metropolitan Police Force (London) recruits ‘super-recognisers’ from within its ranks, for deployment on various identification tasks. Here we test four working super-recognisers from within this police force, and ask whether they are really able to perform at levels above control groups. We consistently find that the police ‘super-recognisers’ perform at well above normal levels on tests of unfamiliar and familiar face matching, with degraded as well as high quality images. Recruiting employees with high levels of skill in these areas, and allocating them to relevant tasks, is an efficient way to overcome some of the known difficulties associated with unfamiliar face recognition. PMID:26918457

Face Recognition by Metropolitan Police Super-Recognisers.

PubMed

Robertson, David J; Noyes, Eilidh; Dowsett, Andrew J; Jenkins, Rob; Burton, A Mike

2016-01-01

Face recognition is used to prove identity across a wide variety of settings. Despite this, research consistently shows that people are typically rather poor at matching faces to photos. Some professional groups, such as police and passport officers, have been shown to perform just as poorly as the general public on standard tests of face recognition. However, face recognition skills are subject to wide individual variation, with some people showing exceptional ability-a group that has come to be known as 'super-recognisers'. The Metropolitan Police Force (London) recruits 'super-recognisers' from within its ranks, for deployment on various identification tasks. Here we test four working super-recognisers from within this police force, and ask whether they are really able to perform at levels above control groups. We consistently find that the police 'super-recognisers' perform at well above normal levels on tests of unfamiliar and familiar face matching, with degraded as well as high quality images. Recruiting employees with high levels of skill in these areas, and allocating them to relevant tasks, is an efficient way to overcome some of the known difficulties associated with unfamiliar face recognition.

Face liveness detection using shearlet-based feature descriptors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Feng, Litong; Po, Lai-Man; Li, Yuming; Yuan, Fang

2016-07-01

Face recognition is a widely used biometric technology due to its convenience but it is vulnerable to spoofing attacks made by nonreal faces such as photographs or videos of valid users. The antispoof problem must be well resolved before widely applying face recognition in our daily life. Face liveness detection is a core technology to make sure that the input face is a live person. However, this is still very challenging using conventional liveness detection approaches of texture analysis and motion detection. The aim of this paper is to propose a feature descriptor and an efficient framework that can be used to effectively deal with the face liveness detection problem. In this framework, new feature descriptors are defined using a multiscale directional transform (shearlet transform). Then, stacked autoencoders and a softmax classifier are concatenated to detect face liveness. We evaluated this approach using the CASIA Face antispoofing database and replay-attack database. The experimental results show that our approach performs better than the state-of-the-art techniques following the provided protocols of these databases, and it is possible to significantly enhance the security of the face recognition biometric system. In addition, the experimental results also demonstrate that this framework can be easily extended to classify different spoofing attacks.

Progressive-Era Resources on the World Wide Web.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howenstein, Amanda

1999-01-01

Provides a list of Progressive-era websites with the address and a detailed description of each of the websites. Includes topics such as the womens suffrage movement, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, the Prohibition, labor-management conflicts, the Hull House, the Chicago fire, Emma Goldman, Progressive-era entertainment, and the Worlds Fair.…

A Meta-Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies of Growth Differentiation Factor-15 Concentration in Blood

PubMed Central

Jiang, Jiyang; Thalamuthu, Anbupalam; Ho, Jennifer E.; Mahajan, Anubha; Ek, Weronica E.; Brown, David A.; Breit, Samuel N.; Wang, Thomas J.; Gyllensten, Ulf; Chen, Ming-Huei; Enroth, Stefan; Januzzi, James L.; Lind, Lars; Armstrong, Nicola J.; Kwok, John B.; Schofield, Peter R.; Wen, Wei; Trollor, Julian N.; Johansson, Åsa; Morris, Andrew P.; Vasan, Ramachandran S.; Sachdev, Perminder S.; Mather, Karen A.

2018-01-01

Blood levels of growth differentiation factor-15 (GDF-15), also known as macrophage inhibitory cytokine-1 (MIC-1), have been associated with various pathological processes and diseases, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. Prior studies suggest genetic factors play a role in regulating blood MIC-1/GDF-15 concentration. In the current study, we conducted the largest genome-wide association study (GWAS) to date using a sample of ∼5,400 community-based Caucasian participants, to determine the genetic variants associated with MIC-1/GDF-15 blood concentration. Conditional and joint (COJO), gene-based association, and gene-set enrichment analyses were also carried out to identify novel loci, genes, and pathways. Consistent with prior results, a locus on chromosome 19, which includes nine single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (top SNP, rs888663, p = 1.690 × 10-35), was significantly associated with blood MIC-1/GDF-15 concentration, and explained 21.47% of its variance. COJO analysis showed evidence for two independent signals within this locus. Gene-based analysis confirmed the chromosome 19 locus association and in addition, a putative locus on chromosome 1. Gene-set enrichment analyses showed that the“COPI-mediated anterograde transport” gene-set was associated with MIC-1/GDF15 blood concentration with marginal significance after FDR correction (p = 0.067). In conclusion, a locus on chromosome 19 was associated with MIC-1/GDF-15 blood concentration with genome-wide significance, with evidence for a new locus (chromosome 1). Future studies using independent cohorts are needed to confirm the observed associations especially for the chromosomes 1 locus, and to further investigate and identify the causal SNPs that contribute to MIC-1/GDF-15 levels. PMID:29628937

A Meta-Analysis of Genome-Wide Association Studies of Growth Differentiation Factor-15 Concentration in Blood.

PubMed

Jiang, Jiyang; Thalamuthu, Anbupalam; Ho, Jennifer E; Mahajan, Anubha; Ek, Weronica E; Brown, David A; Breit, Samuel N; Wang, Thomas J; Gyllensten, Ulf; Chen, Ming-Huei; Enroth, Stefan; Januzzi, James L; Lind, Lars; Armstrong, Nicola J; Kwok, John B; Schofield, Peter R; Wen, Wei; Trollor, Julian N; Johansson, Åsa; Morris, Andrew P; Vasan, Ramachandran S; Sachdev, Perminder S; Mather, Karen A

2018-01-01

Blood levels of growth differentiation factor-15 (GDF-15), also known as macrophage inhibitory cytokine-1 (MIC-1), have been associated with various pathological processes and diseases, including cardiovascular disease and cancer. Prior studies suggest genetic factors play a role in regulating blood MIC-1/GDF-15 concentration. In the current study, we conducted the largest genome-wide association study (GWAS) to date using a sample of ∼5,400 community-based Caucasian participants, to determine the genetic variants associated with MIC-1/GDF-15 blood concentration. Conditional and joint (COJO), gene-based association, and gene-set enrichment analyses were also carried out to identify novel loci, genes, and pathways. Consistent with prior results, a locus on chromosome 19, which includes nine single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) (top SNP, rs888663, p = 1.690 × 10 -35 ), was significantly associated with blood MIC-1/GDF-15 concentration, and explained 21.47% of its variance. COJO analysis showed evidence for two independent signals within this locus. Gene-based analysis confirmed the chromosome 19 locus association and in addition, a putative locus on chromosome 1. Gene-set enrichment analyses showed that the"COPI-mediated anterograde transport" gene-set was associated with MIC-1/GDF15 blood concentration with marginal significance after FDR correction ( p = 0.067). In conclusion, a locus on chromosome 19 was associated with MIC-1/GDF-15 blood concentration with genome-wide significance, with evidence for a new locus (chromosome 1). Future studies using independent cohorts are needed to confirm the observed associations especially for the chromosomes 1 locus, and to further investigate and identify the causal SNPs that contribute to MIC-1/GDF-15 levels.

Apparent height and body mass index influence perceived leadership ability in three-dimensional faces.

PubMed

Re, Daniel E; Dzhelyova, Milena; Holzleitner, Iris J; Tigue, Cara C; Feinberg, David R; Perrett, David I

2012-01-01

Facial appearance has a well-documented effect on perceived leadership ability. Face judgments of leadership ability predict political election outcomes across the world, and similar judgments of business CEOs predict company profits. Body height is also associated with leadership ability, with taller people attaining positions of leadership more than their shorter counterparts in both politics and in the corporate world. Previous studies have found some face characteristics that are associated with leadership judgments, however there have been no studies with three-dimensional faces. We assessed which facial characteristics drive leadership judgments in three-dimensional faces. We found a perceptual relationship between height and leadership ability. We also found that facial maturity correlated with leadership judgments, and that faces of people with an unhealthily high body mass index received lower leadership ratings. We conclude that face attributes associated with body size and maturity alter leadership perception, and may influence real-world democratic leadership selection.

The readability of pediatric patient education materials on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

D'Alessandro, D M; Kingsley, P; Johnson-West, J

2001-07-01

Literacy is a national and international problem. Studies have shown the readability of adult and pediatric patient education materials to be too high for average adults. Materials should be written at the 8th-grade level or lower. To determine the general readability of pediatric patient education materials designed for adults on the World Wide Web (WWW). GeneralPediatrics.com (http://www.generalpediatrics.com) is a digital library serving the medical information needs of pediatric health care providers, patients, and families. Documents from 100 different authoritative Web sites designed for laypersons were evaluated using a built-in computer software readability formula (Flesch Reading Ease and Flesch-Kincaid reading levels) and hand calculation methods (Fry Formula and SMOG methods). Analysis of variance and paired t tests determined significance. Eighty-nine documents constituted the final sample; they covered a wide spectrum of pediatric topics. The overall Flesch Reading Ease score was 57.0. The overall mean Fry Formula was 12.0 (12th grade, 0 months of schooling) and SMOG was 12.2. The overall Flesch-Kincaid grade level was significantly lower (P<.0001), at a mean of 7.1, when compared with the other 2 methods. All author and institution groups had an average reading level above 10.6 by the Fry Formula and SMOG methods. Pediatric patient education materials on the WWW are not written at an appropriate reading level for the average adult. We propose that a practical reading level and how it was determined be included on all patient education materials on the WWW for general guidance in material selection. We discuss suggestions for improved readability of patient education materials.

Top ten reasons the World Wide Web may fail to change medical education.

PubMed

Friedman, R B

1996-09-01

The Internet's World Wide Web (WWW) offers educators a unique opportunity to introduce computer-assisted instructional (CAI) programs into the medical school curriculum. With the WWW, CAI programs developed at one medical school could be successfully used at other institutions without concern about hardware or software compatibility; further, programs could be maintained and regularly updated at a single central location, could be distributed rapidly, would be technology-independent, and would be presented in the same format on all computers. However, while the WWW holds promise for CAI, the author discusses ten reasons that educators' efforts to fulfill the Web's promise may fail, including the following: CAI is generally not fully integrated into the medical school curriculum; students are not tested on material taught using CAI; and CAI programs tend to be poorly designed. The author argues that medical educators must overcome these obstacles if they are to make truly effective use of the WWW in the classroom.

Face-Likeness and Image Variability Drive Responses in Human Face-Selective Ventral Regions

PubMed Central

Davidenko, Nicolas; Remus, David A.; Grill-Spector, Kalanit

2012-01-01

The human ventral visual stream contains regions that respond selectively to faces over objects. However, it is unknown whether responses in these regions correlate with how face-like stimuli appear. Here, we use parameterized face silhouettes to manipulate the perceived face-likeness of stimuli and measure responses in face- and object-selective ventral regions with high-resolution fMRI. We first use “concentric hyper-sphere” (CH) sampling to define face silhouettes at different distances from the prototype face. Observers rate the stimuli as progressively more face-like the closer they are to the prototype face. Paradoxically, responses in both face- and object-selective regions decrease as face-likeness ratings increase. Because CH sampling produces blocks of stimuli whose variability is negatively correlated with face-likeness, this effect may be driven by more adaptation during high face-likeness (low-variability) blocks than during low face-likeness (high-variability) blocks. We tested this hypothesis by measuring responses to matched-variability (MV) blocks of stimuli with similar face-likeness ratings as with CH sampling. Critically, under MV sampling, we find a face-specific effect: responses in face-selective regions gradually increase with perceived face-likeness, but responses in object-selective regions are unchanged. Our studies provide novel evidence that face-selective responses correlate with the perceived face-likeness of stimuli, but this effect is revealed only when image variability is controlled across conditions. Finally, our data show that variability is a powerful factor that drives responses across the ventral stream. This indicates that controlling variability across conditions should be a critical tool in future neuroimaging studies of face and object representation. PMID:21823208

Women, pharmacy and the World Wide Web: could they be the answer to the obesity epidemic?

PubMed

Fakih, Souhiela; Hussainy, Safeera; Marriott, Jennifer

2014-04-01

The objective of this article is to explore how giving women access to evidence-based information in weight management through pharmacies, and by utilising the World Wide Web, is a much needed step towards dealing with the obesity crisis. Women's needs should be considered when developing evidence-based information on weight. Excess weight places them at high risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease, infertility and complications following pregnancy and giving birth. Women are also an important population group because they influence decision-making around meal choices for their families and are the biggest consumers of weight-loss products, many of which can be purchased in pharmacies. Pharmacies are readily accessible primary healthcare locations and given the pharmacist's expertise in being able to recognise underlying causes of obesity (e.g. medications, certain disease states), pharmacies are an ideal location to provide women with evidence-based information on all facets of weight management. Considering the exponential rise in the use of the World Wide Web, this information could be delivered as an online educational resource supported by other flexible formats. The time has come for the development of an online, evidence-based educational resource on weight management, which is combined with other flexible formats and targeted at women in general and according to different phases of their lives (pregnancy, post-partum, menopause). By empowering women with this knowledge it will allow them and their families to take better control of their health and wellbeing, and it may just be the much needed answer to complement already existing resources to help curb the obesity epidemic. © 2013 Royal Pharmaceutical Society.

1995 Joseph E. Whitley, MD, Award. A World Wide Web gateway to the radiologic learning file.

PubMed

Channin, D S

1995-12-01

Computer networks in general, and the Internet specifically, are changing the way information is manipulated in the world at large and in radiology. The goal of this project was to develop a computer system in which images from the Radiologic Learning File, available previously only via a single-user laser disc, are made available over a generic, high-availability computer network to many potential users simultaneously. Using a networked workstation in our laboratory and freely available distributed hypertext software, we established a World Wide Web (WWW) information server for radiology. Images from the Radiologic Learning File are requested through the WWW client software, digitized from a single laser disc containing the entire teaching file and then transmitted over the network to the client. The text accompanying each image is incorporated into the transmitted document. The Radiologic Learning File is now on-line, and requests to view the cases result in the delivery of the text and images. Image digitization via a frame grabber takes 1/30th of a second. Conversion of the image to a standard computer graphic format takes 45-60 sec. Text and image transmission speed on a local area network varies between 200 and 400 kilobytes (KB) per second depending on the network load. We have made images from a laser disc of the Radiologic Learning File available through an Internet-based hypertext server. The images previously available through a single-user system located in a remote section of our department are now ubiquitously available throughout our department via the department's computer network. We have thus converted a single-user, limited functionality system into a multiuser, widely available resource.

A Wall of Faces

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Stevens, Lori

2008-01-01

Visitors to the campus of Orland High School (OHS) will never question that they have stepped into a world of the masses: kids, activity, personalities, busyness, and playfulness--a veritable cloud of mild bedlam. The wall of ceramic faces that greets a visitor in the school office is another reminder of the organized chaos that the teachers…

Does my face FIT?: a face image task reveals structure and distortions of facial feature representation.

PubMed

Fuentes, Christina T; Runa, Catarina; Blanco, Xenxo Alvarez; Orvalho, Verónica; Haggard, Patrick

2013-01-01

Despite extensive research on face perception, few studies have investigated individuals' knowledge about the physical features of their own face. In this study, 50 participants indicated the location of key features of their own face, relative to an anchor point corresponding to the tip of the nose, and the results were compared to the true location of the same individual's features from a standardised photograph. Horizontal and vertical errors were analysed separately. An overall bias to underestimate vertical distances revealed a distorted face representation, with reduced face height. Factor analyses were used to identify separable subconfigurations of facial features with correlated localisation errors. Independent representations of upper and lower facial features emerged from the data pattern. The major source of variation across individuals was in representation of face shape, with a spectrum from tall/thin to short/wide representation. Visual identification of one's own face is excellent, and facial features are routinely used for establishing personal identity. However, our results show that spatial knowledge of one's own face is remarkably poor, suggesting that face representation may not contribute strongly to self-awareness.

A World Wide Web (WWW) server database engine for an organelle database, MitoDat.

PubMed

Lemkin, P F; Chipperfield, M; Merril, C; Zullo, S

1996-03-01

We describe a simple database search engine "dbEngine" which may be used to quickly create a searchable database on a World Wide Web (WWW) server. Data may be prepared from spreadsheet programs (such as Excel, etc.) or from tables exported from relationship database systems. This Common Gateway Interface (CGI-BIN) program is used with a WWW server such as available commercially, or from National Center for Supercomputer Algorithms (NCSA) or CERN. Its capabilities include: (i) searching records by combinations of terms connected with ANDs or ORs; (ii) returning search results as hypertext links to other WWW database servers; (iii) mapping lists of literature reference identifiers to the full references; (iv) creating bidirectional hypertext links between pictures and the database. DbEngine has been used to support the MitoDat database (Mendelian and non-Mendelian inheritance associated with the Mitochondrion) on the WWW.

World-Wide Web Tools for Locating Planetary Images

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kanefsky, Bob; Deiss, Ron (Technical Monitor)

1995-01-01

The explosive growth of the World-Wide Web (WWW) in the past year has made it feasible to provide interactive graphical tools to assist scientists in locating planetary images. The highest available resolution images of any site of interest can be quickly found on a map or plot, and, if online, displayed immediately on nearly any computer equipped with a color screen, an Internet connection, and any of the free WWW browsers. The same tools may also be of interest to educators, students, and the general public. Image finding tools have been implemented covering most of the solar system: Earth, Mars, and the moons and planets imaged by Voyager. The Mars image-finder, which plots the footprints of all the high-resolution Viking Orbiter images and can be used to display any that are available online, also contains a complete scrollable atlas and hypertext gazetteer to help locating areas. The Earth image-finder is linked to thousands of Shuttle images stored at NASA/JSC, and displays them as red dots on a globe. The Voyager image-finder plots images as dots, by longitude and apparent target size, linked to online images. The locator (URL) for the top-level page is http: //ic-www.arc.nasa.gov/ic/projects/bayes-group/Atlas/. Through the efforts of the Planetary Data System and other organizations, hundreds of thousands of planetary images are now available on CD-ROM, and many of these have been made available on the WWW. However, locating images of a desired site is still problematic, in practice. For example, many scientists studying Mars use digital image maps, which are one third the resolution of Viking Orbiter survey images. When they douse Viking Orbiter images, they often work with photographically printed hardcopies, which lack the flexibility of digital images: magnification, contrast stretching, and other basic image-processing techniques offered by off-the-shelf software. From the perspective of someone working on an experimental image processing technique for

Novel face-detection method under various environments

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Jing, Min-Quan; Chen, Ling-Hwei

2009-06-01

We propose a method to detect a face with different poses under various environments. On the basis of skin color information, skin regions are first extracted from an input image. Next, the shoulder part is cut out by using shape information and the head part is then identified as a face candidate. For a face candidate, a set of geometric features is applied to determine if it is a profile face. If not, then a set of eyelike rectangles extracted from the face candidate and the lighting distribution are used to determine if the face candidate is a nonprofile face. Experimental results show that the proposed method is robust under a wide range of lighting conditions, different poses, and races. The detection rate for the HHI face database is 93.68%. For the Champion face database, the detection rate is 95.15%.

Osmotic potential calculations of inorganic and organic aqueous solutions over wide solute concentration levels and temperatures

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Cochrane, T. T., E-mail: agteca@hotmail.com; Cochrane, T. A., E-mail: tom.cochrane@canterbury.ac.nz

Purpose: To demonstrate that the authors’ new “aqueous solution vs pure water” equation to calculate osmotic potential may be used to calculate the osmotic potentials of inorganic and organic aqueous solutions over wide ranges of solute concentrations and temperatures. Currently, the osmotic potentials of solutions used for medical purposes are calculated from equations based on the thermodynamics of the gas laws which are only accurate at low temperature and solute concentration levels. Some solutions used in medicine may need their osmotic potentials calculated more accurately to take into account solute concentrations and temperatures. Methods: The authors experimented with their newmore » equation for calculating the osmotic potentials of inorganic and organic aqueous solutions up to and beyond body temperatures by adjusting three of its factors; (a) the volume property of pure water, (b) the number of “free” water molecules per unit volume of solution, “N{sub f},” and (c) the “t” factor expressing the cooperative structural relaxation time of pure water at given temperatures. Adequate information on the volume property of pure water at different temperatures is available in the literature. However, as little information on the relative densities of inorganic and organic solutions, respectively, at varying temperatures needed to calculate N{sub f} was available, provisional equations were formulated to approximate values. Those values together with tentative t values for different temperatures chosen from values calculated by different workers were substituted into the authors’ equation to demonstrate how osmotic potentials could be estimated over temperatures up to and beyond bodily temperatures. Results: The provisional equations formulated to calculate N{sub f}, the number of free water molecules per unit volume of inorganic and organic solute solutions, respectively, over wide concentration ranges compared well with the calculations of

A quantitative link between face discrimination deficits and neuronal selectivity for faces in autism☆

PubMed Central

Jiang, Xiong; Bollich, Angela; Cox, Patrick; Hyder, Eric; James, Joette; Gowani, Saqib Ali; Hadjikhani, Nouchine; Blanz, Volker; Manoach, Dara S.; Barton, Jason J.S.; Gaillard, William D.; Riesenhuber, Maximilian

2013-01-01

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) appear to show a general face discrimination deficit across a range of tasks including social–emotional judgments as well as identification and discrimination. However, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies probing the neural bases of these behavioral differences have produced conflicting results: while some studies have reported reduced or no activity to faces in ASD in the Fusiform Face Area (FFA), a key region in human face processing, others have suggested more typical activation levels, possibly reflecting limitations of conventional fMRI techniques to characterize neuron-level processing. Here, we test the hypotheses that face discrimination abilities are highly heterogeneous in ASD and are mediated by FFA neurons, with differences in face discrimination abilities being quantitatively linked to variations in the estimated selectivity of face neurons in the FFA. Behavioral results revealed a wide distribution of face discrimination performance in ASD, ranging from typical performance to chance level performance. Despite this heterogeneity in perceptual abilities, individual face discrimination performance was well predicted by neural selectivity to faces in the FFA, estimated via both a novel analysis of local voxel-wise correlations, and the more commonly used fMRI rapid adaptation technique. Thus, face processing in ASD appears to rely on the FFA as in typical individuals, differing quantitatively but not qualitatively. These results for the first time mechanistically link variations in the ASD phenotype to specific differences in the typical face processing circuit, identifying promising targets for interventions. PMID:24179786

Face recognition accuracy of forensic examiners, superrecognizers, and face recognition algorithms.

PubMed

Phillips, P Jonathon; Yates, Amy N; Hu, Ying; Hahn, Carina A; Noyes, Eilidh; Jackson, Kelsey; Cavazos, Jacqueline G; Jeckeln, Géraldine; Ranjan, Rajeev; Sankaranarayanan, Swami; Chen, Jun-Cheng; Castillo, Carlos D; Chellappa, Rama; White, David; O'Toole, Alice J

2018-06-12

Achieving the upper limits of face identification accuracy in forensic applications can minimize errors that have profound social and personal consequences. Although forensic examiners identify faces in these applications, systematic tests of their accuracy are rare. How can we achieve the most accurate face identification: using people and/or machines working alone or in collaboration? In a comprehensive comparison of face identification by humans and computers, we found that forensic facial examiners, facial reviewers, and superrecognizers were more accurate than fingerprint examiners and students on a challenging face identification test. Individual performance on the test varied widely. On the same test, four deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs), developed between 2015 and 2017, identified faces within the range of human accuracy. Accuracy of the algorithms increased steadily over time, with the most recent DCNN scoring above the median of the forensic facial examiners. Using crowd-sourcing methods, we fused the judgments of multiple forensic facial examiners by averaging their rating-based identity judgments. Accuracy was substantially better for fused judgments than for individuals working alone. Fusion also served to stabilize performance, boosting the scores of lower-performing individuals and decreasing variability. Single forensic facial examiners fused with the best algorithm were more accurate than the combination of two examiners. Therefore, collaboration among humans and between humans and machines offers tangible benefits to face identification accuracy in important applications. These results offer an evidence-based roadmap for achieving the most accurate face identification possible. Copyright © 2018 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.

Geographic variation in the relationships of temperature, salinity or sigma sub t versus plant nutrient concentrations in the world ocean. [silicic acid, nitrate, and phosphate concentration

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Kamykowski, D.; Zentara, S. J.

1985-01-01

A NODC data set representing all regions of the world ocean was analyzed for temperature and sigma-t relationships with nitrate, phosphate or silicic acid. Six cubic regressions were for each ten degree square of latitude and longitude containing adequate data. World maps display the locations that allow the prediction of plant nutrient concentrations from temperature or sigma-t. Geographic coverage improves along the sequence: nitrate, phosphate, and silicic acid and is better for sigma-t than for temperature. Contour maps of the approximate temperature of sigma-t at which these nitrients are no longer measurable in a parcel of water are generated, based on a percentile analysis of the temperature or sigma-t at which less than a selected amount of plant nutrient occurs. Results are stored on magnetic tape in tabular form. The global potential to predict plant nutrient concentrations from remotely sensed temperature of sigma-t and to emphasize the latitudinally and longitudinally changing phytoplankton growth environment in present and past oceans is demonstrated.

Double-u double-u double-u dot APIC dot org: a review of the APIC World Wide Web site.

PubMed

Harr, J

1996-12-01

The widespread use of the Internet and the development of the World Wide Web have led to a revolution in electronic communication and information access. The Association for Professional in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) has developed a site on the World Wide Web to provide mechanisms for international on-line information access and exchange on issues related to the practice of infection control and the application of epidemiology. From the home page of the APIC Web site, users can access information on professional resources, publications, educational offering, governmental affairs, the APIC organization, and the infection control profession. Among the chief features of the site is a discussion forum for posing questions and sharing information about infection control and epidemiology. The site also contains a searchable database of practice-related abstracts and descriptions and order forms for APIC publications. Users will find continuing education course descriptions and registration forms, legislative and regulatory action alerts and a congressional mailer, chapter and committee information, and infection control information of interest to the general public. APIC is considering several potential future enhancements to their Web site and will continue to review the site's content and features to provide current and useful information to infection control professionals.

The Impact of Electronic Health Records on Healthcare Professional's Beliefs and Attitudes toward Face to Face Communication

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nickles, Kenneth Patrick

2012-01-01

The impact of electronic health records on healthcare professional's beliefs and attitudes toward face to face communication during patient and provider interactions was examined. Quantitative survey research assessed user attitudes towards an electronic health record system and revealed that healthcare professionals from a wide range of…

Generating virtual training samples for sparse representation of face images and face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Du, Yong; Wang, Yu

2016-03-01

There are many challenges in face recognition. In real-world scenes, images of the same face vary with changing illuminations, different expressions and poses, multiform ornaments, or even altered mental status. Limited available training samples cannot convey these possible changes in the training phase sufficiently, and this has become one of the restrictions to improve the face recognition accuracy. In this article, we view the multiplication of two images of the face as a virtual face image to expand the training set and devise a representation-based method to perform face recognition. The generated virtual samples really reflect some possible appearance and pose variations of the face. By multiplying a training sample with another sample from the same subject, we can strengthen the facial contour feature and greatly suppress the noise. Thus, more human essential information is retained. Also, uncertainty of the training data is simultaneously reduced with the increase of the training samples, which is beneficial for the training phase. The devised representation-based classifier uses both the original and new generated samples to perform the classification. In the classification phase, we first determine K nearest training samples for the current test sample by calculating the Euclidean distances between the test sample and training samples. Then, a linear combination of these selected training samples is used to represent the test sample, and the representation result is used to classify the test sample. The experimental results show that the proposed method outperforms some state-of-the-art face recognition methods.

Robust Point Set Matching for Partial Face Recognition.

PubMed

Weng, Renliang; Lu, Jiwen; Tan, Yap-Peng

2016-03-01

Over the past three decades, a number of face recognition methods have been proposed in computer vision, and most of them use holistic face images for person identification. In many real-world scenarios especially some unconstrained environments, human faces might be occluded by other objects, and it is difficult to obtain fully holistic face images for recognition. To address this, we propose a new partial face recognition approach to recognize persons of interest from their partial faces. Given a pair of gallery image and probe face patch, we first detect keypoints and extract their local textural features. Then, we propose a robust point set matching method to discriminatively match these two extracted local feature sets, where both the textural information and geometrical information of local features are explicitly used for matching simultaneously. Finally, the similarity of two faces is converted as the distance between these two aligned feature sets. Experimental results on four public face data sets show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Interaction between Social Categories in the Composite Face Paradigm

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chen, Wenfeng; Ren, Naixin; Young, Andrew W.; Liu, Chang Hong

2018-01-01

The composite face paradigm (Young, Hellawell, & Hay, 1987) is widely used to demonstrate holistic perception of faces (Rossion, 2013). In the paradigm, parts from different faces (usually the top and bottom halves) are recombined. The principal criterion for holistic perception is that responses involving the component parts of composites in…

EDITORIAL: Sixth World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography (WCIPT6) Sixth World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography (WCIPT6)

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Takei, Masahiro; Xu, Lijun

2011-10-01

We are pleased to publish this special feature on the Sixth World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography (WCIPT6) in Measurement Science and Technology. The international congress was successfully held in the campus of Beihang University, Beijing, China, from 6-9 September 2010. It was jointly organized by International Society for Industrial Process Tomography (ISIPT), North China Electric Power University (NCEPU) and Beihang University (BUAA). Process tomography is a tangible tool to visualize and determine the material distribution inside a process non-intrusively in real time. The internal features that can be monitored by process tomography are frequently encountered and required in the design of processes and industrial plants in the fields of chemical, oil, power and metallurgical engineering as well as many other activities such as food, material handling and combustion systems. One of the key characteristics of process tomography is to provide a direct impression and instant and clear understanding of a complex phenomenon. From the viewpoint of practical applications, industries all over the world are currently facing a number of daunting challenges including many wide-range and complex technical problems. The innovative technology of process tomography consistently contributes to providing better and better solutions to the problems as 'seeing is believing'. As a regular event, WCIPT is playing a more and more important role in addressing the challenges to overcome these problems. We are glad to see that this special feature provides a great opportunity for world-wide top-level researchers to discuss and make further developments in process tomography and its applications. The 20 articles included in this issue cover a wide range of relevant topics including sensors and sensing mechanisms, data acquisition systems and instrumentation, electrical, optical, acoustic and hybrid systems, image reconstruction and system evaluation, data and sensor fusion

Teaching Contemporary Physics Topics Using Real-Time Data Obtained via the World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Post-Zwicker, A. P.; Davis, W.; Grip, R.; McKay, M.; Pfaff, R.; Stotler, D. P.

1999-12-01

As a teaching tool, the World Wide Web (WWW) is unprecedented in its ability to transmit information and enhance communication between scientist and student. Just beginning to be developed are sites that actively engage the user in the learning process and provide hands-on methods of teaching contemporary topics. These topics are often not found in the classroom due to the complexity and expense of the laboratory equipment and the WWW is an ideal tool for overcoming this difficulty. This paper presents a model for using the Internet to teach high school students about plasma physics and fusion energy. Students are given access to real-time data, virtual experiments, and communication with professional scientists via email. Preliminary data indicate that student collaboration and student-led learning is encouraged when using the site in the classroom. Scientist/student mentoring is enhanced with this form of communication.

Fighting Illiteracy in the Arab World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hammud, Muwafaq Abu; Jarrar, Amani G.

2017-01-01

Illiteracy in the Arab world is becoming an urgent necessity particularly facing problems of poverty, ignorance, extremism, which impede the required economic, social, political and cultural development processes. Extremism, violence and terrorism, in the Arab world, can only be eliminated by spreading of knowledge, fighting illiteracy. The study…

Analysis of doping concentration and composition in wide bandgap AlGaN:Si by wavelength dispersive x-ray spectroscopy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Kusch, Gunnar; Mehnke, Frank; Enslin, Johannes; Edwards, Paul R.; Wernicke, Tim; Kneissl, Michael; Martin, Robert W.

2017-03-01

Detailed knowledge of the dopant concentration and composition of wide band gap Al x Ga{}1-x{{N}} layers is of crucial importance for the fabrication of ultra violet light emitting diodes. This paper demonstrates the capabilities of wavelength dispersive x-ray (WDX) spectroscopy in accurately determining these parameters and compares the results with those from high resolution x-ray diffraction (HR-XRD) and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). WDX spectroscopy has been carried out on different silicon-doped wide bandgap Al x Ga{}1-x{{N}} samples (x between 0.80 and 1). This study found a linear increase in the Si concentration with the SiH4/group-III ratio, measuring Si concentrations between 3× {10}18 cm-3 and 2.8× {10}19 cm-3, while no direct correlation between the AlN composition and the Si incorporation ratio was found. Comparison between the composition obtained by WDX and by HR-XRD showed very good agreement in the range investigated, while comparison of the donor concentration between WDX and SIMS found only partial agreement, which we attribute to a number of effects.

Children at Risk: Global Views on Challenges Facing Children

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neugebauer, Roger

2011-01-01

Members of the World Forum community were invited to respond to the question: "What is the most urgent challenge facing young children in your country?" Here are some of their responses. Jamils Richard Achunji Anguaseh mentions that in Cameroon, young children face lots of insecurity, both from health hazards and poor parenting practices. There…

Will intra-specific differences in transpiration efficiency in wheat be maintained in a high CO₂ world? A FACE study.

PubMed

Tausz-Posch, Sabine; Norton, Robert M; Seneweera, Saman; Fitzgerald, Glenn J; Tausz, Michael

2013-06-01

This study evaluates whether the target breeding trait of superior leaf level transpiration efficiency is still appropriate under increasing carbon dioxide levels of a future climate using a semi-arid cropping system as a model. Specifically, we investigated whether physiological traits governing leaf level transpiration efficiency, such as net assimilation rates (A(net)), stomatal conductance (g(s)) or stomatal sensitivity were affected differently between two Triticum aestivum L. cultivars differing in transpiration efficiency (cv. Drysdale, superior; cv. Hartog, low). Plants were grown under Free Air Carbon dioxide Enrichment (FACE, approximately 550 µmol mol⁻¹ or ambient CO₂ concentrations (approximately 390 µmol mol⁻¹). Mean A(net) (approximately 15% increase) and gs (approximately 25% decrease) were less affected by elevated [CO₂] than previously found in FACE-grown wheat (approximately 25% increase and approximately 32% decrease, respectively), potentially reflecting growth in a dry-land cropping system. In contrast to previous FACE studies, analyses of the Ball et al. model revealed an elevated [CO₂] effect on the slope of the linear regression by 12% indicating a decrease in stomatal sensitivity to the combination of [CO₂], photosynthesis rate and humidity. Differences between cultivars indicated greater transpiration efficiency for Drysdale with growth under elevated [CO₂] potentially increasing the response of this trait. This knowledge adds valuable information for crop germplasm improvement for future climates. Copyright © Physiologia Plantarum 2012.

CAE Based Die Face Engineering Development to Contribute to the Revitalization of the Tool & Die Industry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tang, Arthur; Lee, Wing C.; St. Pierre, Shawn; He, Jeanne; Liu, Kesu; Chen, Chin C.

2005-08-01

Over the past two decades, the Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) tools have emerged as one of the most important engineering tools in various industries, due to its flexibility and accuracy in prediction. Nowadays, CAE tools are widely used in the sheet metal forming industry to predict the forming feasibility of a wide variety of complex components, ranging from aerospace and automotive components to household products. As the demand of CAE based formability accelerates, the need for a robust and streamlined die face engineering tool becomes more crucial, especially in the early stage when the tooling layout is not available, but a product design decision must be made. Ability to generate blank, binder and addendum surfaces with an appropriate layout of Drawbead, Punch Opening Line, Trim Line are the primary features and functions of a CAE based die face engineering tool. Once the die face layout is ready, a formability study should be followed to verify the die face layout is adequate to produce a formable part. If successful, the established die face surface should be exported back to the CAD/CAM environment to speed up the tooling and manufacturing design process with confidence that this particular part is formable with this given die face. With a CAE tool as described above, the tool & die industry will be greatly impacted as the processes will enable the bypass of hardware try-out and shorten the overall vehicle production timing. The trend has shown that OEMs and first tiers will source to low cost producers in the world which will have a negative impact to the traditional tool & die makers in the developed countries. CAE based tool as described should be adopted, along with many other solutions, in order to maintain efficiency of producing high quality product and meeting time-to-market requirements. This paper will describe how a CAE based die face engineering (DFE) tool could be further developed to enable the traditional tool & die makers to meet the

The World of Sports Medicine

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Emeagwali, N. Susan

2008-01-01

Soon, the best athletes in the world will face each other at the Summer Olympics in Beijing. Many of them will sustain injuries, or seek to prevent them, and will be thankful that among their entourages are some of the best sports medicine professionals in the world. When an athlete collapses from fatigue, or something else, there will be a group…

Concentration measurement in a road tunnel as a method to assess "real-world" vehicles exhaust emissions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zanini, G.; Berico, M.; Monforti, F.; Vitali, L.; Zambonelli, S.; Chiavarini, S.; Georgiadis, T.; Nardino, M.

An experiment aimed at comparing particulate matter (PM) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) concentrations produced in a road tunnel by buses is described. The experiment took place in 2001 in Bologna when a couple of buses belonging to the public transport fleet where driven backwards and forwards in a road tunnel closed to all other vehicles. Buses run in the tunnel for 8 h a day for 4 experiment days, each day using a different fuel: biodiesel, diesel-water emulsion, diesel-water emulsion with low sulphur content and commercial diesel. Average daily concentrations of PM of different sizes and of 12 PHAs were measured and comparison between different fuels was attempted in order to assess "real-world" exhaust emissions of different fuels. Due to heterogeneity of experimental conditions in different days and the relatively large measurement uncertainties, the effort was only partially successful, and it was not possible to state any firm conclusion on fuels reliability even if some indications in agreement with literature were found. Nevertheless, the experiment and the data analysis method developed could be of interest as a methodological approach for future experiments aimed at evaluating "real-world" exhaust emissions of single vehicles.

Application of the MOS C-V technique to determine impurity concentrations and surface parameters on the diffused face of silicon solar cells

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Weinberg, I.

1975-01-01

An experimental and theoretical investigation of the feasibility of using the MOS C-V (capacitance-voltage) technique to determine impurity and surface state concentrations on the diffused face of Si solar cells with Ta2O5 coatings. Impurity concentration 10 A from the diffused surface is found to be 2.9 times 10 to the 20th power per cu cm. Charge density in surface and oxide states is 2.1 times 10 to the 13th power per sq cm. These data agree with theoretical predictions.-

Tolerance for distorted faces: challenges to a configural processing account of familiar face recognition.

PubMed

Sandford, Adam; Burton, A Mike

2014-09-01

Face recognition is widely held to rely on 'configural processing', an analysis of spatial relations between facial features. We present three experiments in which viewers were shown distorted faces, and asked to resize these to their correct shape. Based on configural theories appealing to metric distances between features, we reason that this should be an easier task for familiar than unfamiliar faces (whose subtle arrangements of features are unknown). In fact, participants were inaccurate at this task, making between 8% and 13% errors across experiments. Importantly, we observed no advantage for familiar faces: in one experiment participants were more accurate with unfamiliars, and in two experiments there was no difference. These findings were not due to general task difficulty - participants were able to resize blocks of colour to target shapes (squares) more accurately. We also found an advantage of familiarity for resizing other stimuli (brand logos). If configural processing does underlie face recognition, these results place constraints on the definition of 'configural'. Alternatively, familiar face recognition might rely on more complex criteria - based on tolerance to within-person variation rather than highly specific measurement. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Face recognition performance of individuals with Asperger syndrome on the Cambridge Face Memory Test.

PubMed

Hedley, Darren; Brewer, Neil; Young, Robyn

2011-12-01

Although face recognition deficits in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), including Asperger syndrome (AS), are widely acknowledged, the empirical evidence is mixed. This in part reflects the failure to use standardized and psychometrically sound tests. We contrasted standardized face recognition scores on the Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT) for 34 individuals with AS with those for 42, IQ-matched non-ASD individuals, and age-standardized scores from a large Australian cohort. We also examined the influence of IQ, autistic traits, and negative affect on face recognition performance. Overall, participants with AS performed significantly worse on the CFMT than the non-ASD participants and when evaluated against standardized test norms. However, while 24% of participants with AS presented with severe face recognition impairment (>2 SDs below the mean), many individuals performed at or above the typical level for their age: 53% scored within +/- 1 SD of the mean and 9% demonstrated superior performance (>1 SD above the mean). Regression analysis provided no evidence that IQ, autistic traits, or negative affect significantly influenced face recognition: diagnostic group membership was the only significant predictor of face recognition performance. In sum, face recognition performance in ASD is on a continuum, but with average levels significantly below non-ASD levels of performance. Copyright © 2011, International Society for Autism Research, Wiley-Liss, Inc.

International use of an academic nephrology World Wide Web site: from medical information resource to business tool.

PubMed

Abbott, Kevin C; Oliver, David K; Boal, Thomas R; Gadiyak, Grigorii; Boocks, Carl; Yuan, Christina M; Welch, Paul G; Poropatich, Ronald K

2002-04-01

Studies of the use of the World Wide Web to obtain medical knowledge have largely focused on patients. In particular, neither the international use of academic nephrology World Wide Web sites (websites) as primary information sources nor the use of search engines (and search strategies) to obtain medical information have been described. Visits ("hits") to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) Nephrology Service website from April 30, 2000, to March 14, 2001, were analyzed for the location of originating source using Webtrends, and search engines (Google, Lycos, etc.) were analyzed manually for search strategies used. From April 30, 2000 to March 14, 2001, the WRAMC Nephrology Service website received 1,007,103 hits and 12,175 visits. These visits were from 33 different countries, and the most frequent regions were Western Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, Pacific Islands, and South America. The most frequent organization using the site was the military Internet system, followed by America Online and automated search programs of online search engines, most commonly Google. The online lecture series was the most frequently visited section of the website. Search strategies used in search engines were extremely technical. The use of "robots" by standard Internet search engines to locate websites, which may be blocked by mandatory registration, has allowed users worldwide to access the WRAMC Nephrology Service website to answer very technical questions. This suggests that it is being used as an alternative to other primary sources of medical information and that the use of mandatory registration may hinder users from finding valuable sites. With current Internet technology, even a single service can become a worldwide information resource without sacrificing its primary customers.

Observatory for education and public outreach controlled through the World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Guzik, T. Gregory; Motl, Patrick M.; Burks, Geoffrey S.; Fisher, Paul; Giammanco, James; Landolt, Arlo U.; Stacy, J. G.; Tohline, Joel E.; Wefel, Katrina

1998-05-01

For the last two and a half years the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Louisiana State University has been engaged in a collaborative effort with the Recreation and Park Commission for the Parish of East Baton Rouge and the Baton Rouge Astronomical Society to develop a observatory that can be used for astronomy education from primary school; through graduate studies as well as for recreation and public outreach. The observatory includes a 2,300 square feet facility, a 20-inch diameter Ritchey-Chretien telescope, a black-thinned CCD camera, a computer control system and an internet T1 link. The on site public outreach and education program has been fully active since Fall, 1997 and we are currently in the process of developing a platform- independent system for remotely controlling the observatory over the internet. The initial version of the Java/World Wide Web based software is currently functioning and provides interactive control of the observatory via any Java compatible web browser. The main principles of the remote control system are presented in this paper, along with a discussion of the education and outreach goals of the observatory, details of the facility and hardware, initial measurements of system performance, and a discussion of our future development plans.

Measurement issues related to data collection on the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Strickland, Ora L; Moloney, Margaret F; Dietrich, Alexa S; Myerburg, Stuart; Cotsonis, George A; Johnson, Robert V

2003-01-01

As the World Wide Web has become more prominent as a mode of communication, it has opened up new possibilities for research data collection. This article identifies measurement issues that occur with Internet data collection that are relevant to qualitative and quantitative research approaches as they occurred in a triangulated Internet study of perimenopausal women with migraine headaches. Issues associated with quantitative data collection over the Internet include (a) selecting and designing Internet data collection protocols that adequately address study aims while also taking advantage of the Internet, (b) ensuring the reliability and validity of Internet data collected, (c) adapting quantitative paper-and-pencil data collection protocols for the Internet, (d) making Internet data collection practical for respondents and researchers, and (e) ensuring the quality of quantitative data collected. Qualitative data collection over the Internet needs to remain true to the philosophical stance of the qualitative approach selected. Researcher expertise in qualitative data collection must be combined with expertise in computer technology and information services if data are to be of ultimate quality The advantages and limitations of collecting qualitative data in real time or at a later time are explored, as well as approaches to enhance qualitative data collection over the Internet. It was concluded that like any research approach or method, Internet data collection requires considerable creativity, expertise, and planning to take advantage of the technology for the collection of reliable and valid research data.

Systemic sclerosis: a world wide global analysis.

PubMed

Coral-Alvarado, Paola; Pardo, Aryce L; Castaño-Rodriguez, Natalia; Rojas-Villarraga, Adriana; Anaya, Juan-Manuel

2009-07-01

The objective of this study was to analyze epidemiological tendencies of systemic sclerosis (SSc) around the world in order to identify possible local variations in the presentation and occurrence of the disease. A systematic review of the literature was performed through electronic databases using the keywords "Systemic Sclerosis" and "Clinical Characteristics." Out of a total of 167 articles, 41 were included in the analysis. Significant differences in the mean age at the time of diagnosis, subsets of SSc, clinical characteristics, and presence of antibodies were found between different regions of the word. Because variations in both additive and nonadditive genetic factors and the environmental variance are specific to the investigated population, ethnicity and geography are important characteristics to be considered in the study of SSc and other autoimmune diseases.

Going the Distance Part 2: Five Ways of Teaching an Extension Course: Elive, Blackboard, Teleconference, Correspondence, and Face-to-Face

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Rader, Heidi B.; Hanna, Virgene; Spiers, Kent; Kienenberger, Donavan

2014-01-01

Remote and widely dispersed clientele in Alaska create a need for effective distance-delivery programs. Extension agents often travel via small airplane, snow machine, or boat to teach face-to-face classes in off-road communities. Effective and more cost-efficient delivery methods are needed. We taught a course for beginning farmers residing…

Delivery of helium–oxygen mixture during spontaneous breathing: evaluation of three high-concentration face masks.

PubMed

Roche-Campo, Ferran; Vignaux, Laurence; Galia, Fabrice; Lyazidi, Aissam; Vargas, Frédéric; Texereau, Joëlle; Apiou-Sbirlea, Gabriela; Jolliet, Philippe; Brochard, Laurent

2011-11-01

To evaluate the efficacy of delivering a mixture of helium and oxygen gas (He–O2) in spontaneous ventilation. Three high oxygen flow reservoir masks were tested: the Heliox21, specifically designed for helium; the Hi-Ox80 mask, with an inspiratory and an expiratory valve; and a standard high-concentration face mask. This prospective randomized crossover study was performed in six healthy volunteers in a laboratory setting. Volunteers breathed a mixture of 78% He/22% O2 through each of the masks under two different breathing conditions (rest and hyperventilation: minute ventilation of 14.9 ± 6.1 and 26.7 ± 8.7 L min(−1), respectively) and four different He–O2 flow rates (7, 10, 12, and 15 L min(−1)). A nasopharyngeal catheter was used to estimate He pharyngeal concentration (Fp [He]) in the airways in order to determine the percentage of contamination with room air (% air cont) at end-expiration. Under all testing conditions, the Hi-Ox80 mask presented a significantly lower % air cont. During resting breathing pattern, a Fp [He] higher than 50% was achieved in 54% of the tests performed with the Hi-Ox80 mask compared to 29% for the Heliox21 mask and only 17% for the standard mask. At hyperventilation, a Fp [He] higher than 50% was achieved in 17% of the tests performed with the Hi-Ox mask compared to 4% for the other two masks. He–O2 administration via the usual high-concentration reservoir masks results in significant dilution by room air. The Hi-Ox80 mask minimized room air contamination and much more frequently achieved a pharyngeal He concentration higher than 50%.

The Imaginary Worlds of Childhood: A Multimedia Presentation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dyson, Anne Haas

1986-01-01

Presents observations of three children's styles of symbolic language focusing on how each leaned to different degrees on drawing and talking to create their imaginary worlds and thus faced different challenges in rendering those worlds in print. (SRT)

A Third-World Country Facing Indigenous Insurgencies: The Malian Touareg Insurgency

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-12-16

Autonomous Base of the United Front for Liberation of Azawad GDP Gross Domestic Product GIA Armed Islamic Group, in French Groupe Islamique Armé......with Al-Qaida of the Islamic Maghreb. Reinforced by Islamist terrorists from Algeria, the Malian army found itself facing experienced, well- finance

Littoral and Coastal Management in Supporting Maritime Security for Realizing Indonesia as World Maritime Axis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Brotosusilo, Agus; Wayan Agus Apriana, I.; Agung Satria, Afrizal; Jokopitoyo, Trisasono

2016-02-01

The Indonesian under President Joko Widodo has new goal to make Indonesia as the world maritime axis. This is supported by the geographic of Indonesia as the largest archipelagic country where the sea is two-thirds wide among the whole spacious. Indonesia is the world largest archipelagic state. More than two-third of its territory consist of seas. The ecosystem of littoral and coastal has correlative relationship with country development. There is no doubt of physically facts that Indonesian littoral and coastal with total wide of 5.8 million km2 is rich with various natural resources. Therefore, the condition of Indonesia with its world second longest coastline has several comparative advantages. Not only the country has an abundant natural resources, but it also blessed by demographic bonus advantage. The population of Indonesian is the fifth largest in the world which approximately 220 million people and approximately 60 percent among them live at coastal areas. The people in coastal area relies their live from its surrounding natural resource. Hence, most of their life and daily activity is related with the presence of natural resources. The dealing of conflict potential and attention to maritime security are important to be studied as a reference in preparing and facing the government policies that will lead to the development of maritime.

Challenges Facing Early Childhood Programs Worldwide

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neugebauer, Roger

2008-01-01

In this article, the author presents the challenges faced by early childhood education in 29 countries, according to the World Forum National Representatives and Global Leaders for Young Children. The countries represented in these responses include: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Fiji, India, Iran, Iraq, Japan,…

Panel workload assessment in US primary care: accounting for non-face-to-face panel management activities.

PubMed

Arndt, Brian; Tuan, Wen-Jan; White, Jennifer; Schumacher, Jessica

2014-01-01

An understanding of primary care provider (PCP) workload is an important consideration in establishing optimal PCP panel size. However, no widely acceptable measure of PCP workload exists that incorporates the effort involved with both non-face-to-face patient care activities and face-to-face encounters. Accounting for this gap is critical given the increase in non-face-to-face PCP activities that has accompanied electronic health records (EHRs) (eg, electronic messaging). Our goal was to provide a comprehensive assessment of perceived PCP workload, accounting for aspects of both face-to-face and non-face-to-face encounters. Internal medicine, family medicine, and pediatric PCPs completed a self-administered survey about the perceived workload involved with face-to-face and non-face-to-face panel management activities as well as the perceived challenge associated with caring for patients with particular biomedical, demographic, and psychosocial characteristics (n = 185). Survey results were combined with EHR data at the individual patient and PCP service levels to assess PCP panel workload, accounting for face-to-face and non-face-to-face utilization. Of the multiple face-to-face and non-face-to-face activities associated with routine primary care, PCPs considered hospital admissions, obstetric care, hospital discharges, and new patient preventive health visits to be greater workload than non-face-to-face activities such as telephone calls, electronic communication, generating letters, and medication refills. Total workload within PCP panels at the individual patient level varied by overall health status, and the total workload of non-face-to-face panel management activities associated with routine primary care was greater than the total workload associated with face-to-face encounters regardless of health status. We used PCP survey results coupled with EHR data to assess PCP workload associated with both face-to-face as well as non-face-to-face panel management

Wireless Wide Area Networks for School Districts.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nair, Prakash

This paper considers a basic question that many schools districts face in attempting to develop affordable, expandable district-wide computer networks that are resistant to obsolescence: Should these wide area networks (WANs) employ wireless technology, stick to venerable hard-wired solutions, or combine both. This publication explores the…

How To Succeed in Promoting Your Web Site: The Impact of Search Engine Registration on Retrieval of a World Wide Web Site.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Tunender, Heather; Ervin, Jane

1998-01-01

Character strings were planted in a World Wide Web site (Project Whistlestop) to test indexing and retrieval rates of five Web search tools (Lycos, infoseek, AltaVista, Yahoo, Excite). It was found that search tools indexed few of the planted character strings, none indexed the META descriptor tag, and only Excite indexed into the 3rd-4th site…

Even subtle cultural differences affect face tuning.

PubMed

Pavlova, Marina A; Heiz, Julie; Sokolov, Alexander N; Fallgatter, Andreas J; Barisnikov, Koviljka

2018-01-01

Culture shapes social cognition in many ways. Yet cultural impact on face tuning remains largely unclear. Here typically developing females and males from the French-speaking part of Switzerland were presented with a set of Arcimboldo-like Face-n-Food images composed of food ingredients and in different degree resembling a face. The outcome had been compared with previous findings obtained in young adults of the South-West Germany. In that study, males exhibit higher thresholds for face tuning on the Face-n-Food task than females. In Swiss participants, no gender differences exist in face tuning. Strikingly, males from the French-speaking part of Switzerland possess higher sensitivity to faces than their German peers, whereas no difference in face tuning occurs between females. The outcome indicates that even relatively subtle cultural differences as well as culture by gender interaction can modulate social cognition. Clarification of the nature of cultural impact on face tuning as well as social cognition at large is of substantial value for understanding a wide range of neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental conditions.

Have a Nice Spring! MOC Revisits "Happy Face" Crater

NASA Image and Video Library

2005-05-16

Smile! Spring has sprung in the martian southern hemisphere. With it comes the annual retreat of the winter polar frost cap. This view of "Happy Face Crater"--officially named "Galle Crater"--shows patches of white water ice frost in and around the crater's south-facing slopes. Slopes that face south will retain frost longer than north-facing slopes because they do not receive as much sunlight in early spring. This picture is a composite of images taken by the Mars Global Surveyor Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) red and blue wide angle cameras. The wide angle cameras were designed to monitor the changing weather, frost, and wind patterns on Mars. Galle Crater is located on the east rim of the Argyre Basin and is about 215 kilometers (134 miles) across. In this picture, illumination is from the upper left and north is up. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02325

What can individual differences reveal about face processing?

PubMed Central

Yovel, Galit; Wilmer, Jeremy B.; Duchaine, Brad

2014-01-01

Faces are probably the most widely studied visual stimulus. Most research on face processing has used a group-mean approach that averages behavioral or neural responses to faces across individuals and treats variance between individuals as noise. However, individual differences in face processing can provide valuable information that complements and extends findings from group-mean studies. Here we demonstrate that studies employing an individual differences approach—examining associations and dissociations across individuals—can answer fundamental questions about the way face processing operates. In particular these studies allow us to associate and dissociate the mechanisms involved in face processing, tie behavioral face processing mechanisms to neural mechanisms, link face processing to broader capacities and quantify developmental influences on face processing. The individual differences approach we illustrate here is a powerful method that should be further explored within the domain of face processing as well as fruitfully applied across the cognitive sciences. PMID:25191241

Future of Pacific salmon in the face of environmental change: Lessons from one of the world's remaining productive salmon regions

USGS Publications Warehouse

Schoen, Erik R.; Wipfli, Mark S.; Trammell, Jamie; Rinella, Daniel J.; Floyd, Angelica L.; Grunblatt, Jess; McCarthy, Molly D.; Meyer, Benjamin E.; Morton, John M.; Powell, James E.; Prakash, Anupma; Reimer, Matthew N.; Stuefer, Svetlana L.; Toniolo, Horacio; Wells, Brett M.; Witmer, Frank D. W.

2017-01-01

Pacific salmon Oncorhynchus spp. face serious challenges from climate and landscape change, particularly in the southern portion of their native range. Conversely, climate warming appears to be allowing salmon to expand northwards into the Arctic. Between these geographic extremes, in the Gulf of Alaska region, salmon are at historically high abundances but face an uncertain future due to rapid environmental change. We examined changes in climate, hydrology, land cover, salmon populations, and fisheries over the past 30–70 years in this region. We focused on the Kenai River, which supports world-famous fisheries but where Chinook Salmon O. tshawytscha populations have declined, raising concerns about their future resilience. The region is warming and experiencing drier summers and wetter autumns. The landscape is also changing, with melting glaciers, wetland loss, wildfires, and human development. This environmental transformation will likely harm some salmon populations while benefiting others. Lowland salmon streams are especially vulnerable, but retreating glaciers may allow production gains in other streams. Some fishing communities harvest a diverse portfolio of fluctuating resources, whereas others have specialized over time, potentially limiting their resilience. Maintaining diverse habitats and salmon runs may allow ecosystems and fisheries to continue to thrive amidst these changes.

Alcoa World Alumina: Plant-Wide Assessment at Arkansas Operations Reveals More than$900,000 in Potential Annual Savings

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Not Available

2003-07-01

The plant-wide energy-efficiency assessment performed in 2001 at the Alcoa World Alumina Arkansas Operations in Bauxite, Arkansas, identified seven opportunities to save energy and reduce costs. By implementing five of these improvements, the facility can save 15,100 million British thermal units per year in natural gas and 8.76 million kilowatt-hours per year in electricity. This translates into approximate annual savings of$925,300 in direct energy costs and non-fuel operating and maintenance costs. The required capital investment is estimated at$271,200. The average payback period for all five projects would be approximately 8 months.

Alcoa World Alumina: Plant Wide Assessment at Arkansas Operation Reveals More than $900,000 in Potential Annual Savings

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

None

2003-07-01

The plant-wide energy-efficiency assessment performed in 2001 at the Alcoa World Alumina Arkansas Operations in Bauxite, Arkansas, identified seven opportunities to save energy and reduce costs. By implementing five of these improvements, the facility can save 15,100 million British thermal units per year in natural gas and 8.76 million kilowatt-hours per year in electricity. This translates into approximate annual savings of $925,300 in direct energy costs and non-fuel operating and maintenance costs. The required capital investment is estimated at $271,200. The average payback period for all five projects would be approximately 8 months.

Venomics of New World pit vipers: genus-wide comparisons of venom proteomes across Agkistrodon.

PubMed

Lomonte, Bruno; Tsai, Wan-Chih; Ureña-Diaz, Juan Manuel; Sanz, Libia; Mora-Obando, Diana; Sánchez, Elda E; Fry, Bryan G; Gutiérrez, José María; Gibbs, H Lisle; Sovic, Michael G; Calvete, Juan J

2014-01-16

We report a genus-wide comparison of venom proteome variation across New World pit vipers in the genus Agkistrodon. Despite the wide variety of habitats occupied by this genus and that all its taxa feed on diverse species of vertebrates and invertebrate prey, the venom proteomes of copperheads, cottonmouths, and cantils are remarkably similar, both in the type and relative abundance of their different toxin families. The venoms from all the eleven species and subspecies sampled showed relatively similar proteolytic and PLA2 activities. In contrast, quantitative differences were observed in hemorrhagic and myotoxic activities in mice. The highest myotoxic activity was observed with the venoms of A. b. bilineatus, followed by A. p. piscivorus, whereas the venoms of A. c. contortrix and A. p. leucostoma induced the lowest myotoxic activity. The venoms of Agkistrodon bilineatus subspecies showed the highest hemorrhagic activity and A. c. contortrix the lowest. Compositional and toxicological analyses agree with clinical observations of envenomations by Agkistrodon in the USA and Central America. A comparative analysis of Agkistrodon shows that venom divergence tracks phylogeny of this genus to a greater extent than in Sistrurus rattlesnakes, suggesting that the distinct natural histories of Agkistrodon and Sistrurus clades may have played a key role in molding the patterns of evolution of their venom protein genes. A deep understanding of the structural and functional profiles of venoms and of the principles governing the evolution of venomous systems is a goal of venomics. Isolated proteomics analyses have been conducted on venoms from many species of vipers and pit vipers. However, making sense of these large inventories of data requires the integration of this information across multiple species to identify evolutionary and ecological trends. Our genus-wide venomics study provides a comprehensive overview of the toxic arsenal across Agkistrodon and a ground for

Development of Human Face Literature Database Using Text Mining Approach: Phase I.

PubMed

Kaur, Paramjit; Krishan, Kewal; Sharma, Suresh K

2018-06-01

The face is an important part of the human body by which an individual communicates in the society. Its importance can be highlighted by the fact that a person deprived of face cannot sustain in the living world. The amount of experiments being performed and the number of research papers being published under the domain of human face have surged in the past few decades. Several scientific disciplines, which are conducting research on human face include: Medical Science, Anthropology, Information Technology (Biometrics, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence, etc.), Psychology, Forensic Science, Neuroscience, etc. This alarms the need of collecting and managing the data concerning human face so that the public and free access of it can be provided to the scientific community. This can be attained by developing databases and tools on human face using bioinformatics approach. The current research emphasizes on creating a database concerning literature data of human face. The database can be accessed on the basis of specific keywords, journal name, date of publication, author's name, etc. The collected research papers will be stored in the form of a database. Hence, the database will be beneficial to the research community as the comprehensive information dedicated to the human face could be found at one place. The information related to facial morphologic features, facial disorders, facial asymmetry, facial abnormalities, and many other parameters can be extracted from this database. The front end has been developed using Hyper Text Mark-up Language and Cascading Style Sheets. The back end has been developed using hypertext preprocessor (PHP). The JAVA Script has used as scripting language. MySQL (Structured Query Language) is used for database development as it is most widely used Relational Database Management System. XAMPP (X (cross platform), Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl) open source web application software has been used as the server.The database is still under the

Eye Tracking Reveals a Crucial Role for Facial Motion in Recognition of Faces by Infants

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Xiao, Naiqi G.; Quinn, Paul C.; Liu, Shaoying; Ge, Liezhong; Pascalis, Olivier; Lee, Kang

2015-01-01

Current knowledge about face processing in infancy comes largely from studies using static face stimuli, but faces that infants see in the real world are mostly moving ones. To bridge this gap, 3-, 6-, and 9-month-old Asian infants (N = 118) were familiarized with either moving or static Asian female faces, and then their face recognition was…

Design of aerosol face masks for children using computerized 3D face analysis.

PubMed

Amirav, Israel; Luder, Anthony S; Halamish, Asaf; Raviv, Dan; Kimmel, Ron; Waisman, Dan; Newhouse, Michael T

2014-08-01

Aerosol masks were originally developed for adults and downsized for children. Overall fit to minimize dead space and a tight seal are problematic, because children's faces undergo rapid and marked topographic and internal anthropometric changes in their first few months/years of life. Facial three-dimensional (3D) anthropometric data were used to design an optimized pediatric mask. Children's faces (n=271, aged 1 month to 4 years) were scanned with 3D technology. Data for the distance from the bridge of the nose to the tip of the chin (H) and the width of the mouth opening (W) were used to categorize the scans into "small," "medium," and "large" "clusters." "Average" masks were developed from each cluster to provide an optimal seal with minimal dead space. The resulting computerized contour, W and H, were used to develop the SootherMask® that enables children, "suckling" on their own pacifier, to keep the mask on their face, mainly by means of subatmospheric pressure. The relatively wide and flexible rim of the mask accommodates variations in facial size within and between clusters. Unique pediatric face masks were developed based on anthropometric data obtained through computerized 3D face analysis. These masks follow facial contours and gently seal to the child's face, and thus may minimize aerosol leakage and dead space.

Video analysis of blows to the head and face at the 1999 World Taekwondo Championships.

PubMed

Koh, J O; Watkinson, E J

2002-09-01

Limited research has been done on head blows that may result in mild traumatic brain injury in Taekwondo. The purpose of this study was to investigate the fighting conditions under which blows to the head commonly take place, with a view to determining the typical conditions under which injury may occur. videotape analysis (retrospective). the semi-final and final matches (a total of 48 matches) at the 14th World Taekwondo Championships in 1999. 64 athletes (32 females and 32 males) who won elimination-round matches (out of 563 competitors), aged 15 to 38 years. frequency, mechanism of head blows, characteristics of situations leading up to and following head blows, frequency of multiple impacts. A total of 35 incidents of head blow occurred (365 blows per 1,000 athlete exposures). All of these head blows were associated with a direct head or face contact and frequently involved: a closed sparring stance, shorter athletes, axe or roundhouse type kicks, attacker's offensive kick, and head-blow-receiver's offensive action with absence of a blocking skill. To prevent possible brain injury resulting from direct head blows, updated safety education, a complete understanding of concussion for athletes, coaches, and referees, and a rule change in competition Taekwondo are recommended.

OV Bootis: Forty Nights Of World-Wide Photometry

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Patterson, Joseph; de Miguel, Enrique; Barret, Douglas; Brincat, Stephen; Boardman, James, Jr.; Buczynski, Denis; Campbell, Tut; Cejudo, David; Cook, Lew; Cook, Michael J.; Collins, Donald; Cooney, Walt; Dubois, Franky; Dvorak, Shawn; Halpern, Jules P.; Kroes, Anthony J.; Lemay, Damien; Licchelli, Domenico; Mankel, Dylan; Marshall, Matt; Novak, Rudolf; Oksanen, Arto; Roberts, George; Seargeant, Jim; Sears, Huei; Silcox, Austin; Slauson, Douglas; Stone, Geoff; Thorstensen, J. R.; Ulowetz, Joe; Vanmunster, Tonny; Wallgren, John; Wood, Matt

2017-06-01

Among the 1000 known cataclysmic variables, only one appears to belong to the "Galactic halo" - the Population II stars. We report round-the-world photometry of this star (OV Boo) during March-April 2017, when it staged its first certified dwarf-nova outburst. The star is remarkable for its short binary period (66 minutes), high proper motion, metal-poor composition, substellar secondary, sharp white-dwarf eclipses, and nonradial pulsations. Something for everybody...... and it even had the good manners to erupt in northern springtime, when it transits near local midnight. Move over, SS Cyg and WZ Sge; there's a new celebrity in town!

Genome-wide diversity and differentiation in New World populations of the human malaria parasite Plasmodium vivax

PubMed Central

de Oliveira, Thais C.; Rodrigues, Priscila T.; Menezes, Maria José; Gonçalves-Lopes, Raquel M.; Bastos, Melissa S.; Lima, Nathália F.; Barbosa, Susana; Gerber, Alexandra L.; Loss de Morais, Guilherme; Berná, Luisa; Phelan, Jody; Robello, Carlos; de Vasconcelos, Ana Tereza R.

2017-01-01

Background The Americas were the last continent colonized by humans carrying malaria parasites. Plasmodium falciparum from the New World shows very little genetic diversity and greater linkage disequilibrium, compared with its African counterparts, and is clearly subdivided into local, highly divergent populations. However, limited available data have revealed extensive genetic diversity in American populations of another major human malaria parasite, P. vivax. Methods We used an improved sample preparation strategy and next-generation sequencing to characterize 9 high-quality P. vivax genome sequences from northwestern Brazil. These new data were compared with publicly available sequences from recently sampled clinical P. vivax isolates from Brazil (BRA, total n = 11 sequences), Peru (PER, n = 23), Colombia (COL, n = 31), and Mexico (MEX, n = 19). Principal findings/Conclusions We found that New World populations of P. vivax are as diverse (nucleotide diversity π between 5.2 × 10−4 and 6.2 × 10−4) as P. vivax populations from Southeast Asia, where malaria transmission is substantially more intense. They display several non-synonymous nucleotide substitutions (some of them previously undescribed) in genes known or suspected to be involved in antimalarial drug resistance, such as dhfr, dhps, mdr1, mrp1, and mrp-2, but not in the chloroquine resistance transporter ortholog (crt-o) gene. Moreover, P. vivax in the Americas is much less geographically substructured than local P. falciparum populations, with relatively little between-population genome-wide differentiation (pairwise FST values ranging between 0.025 and 0.092). Finally, P. vivax populations show a rapid decline in linkage disequilibrium with increasing distance between pairs of polymorphic sites, consistent with very frequent outcrossing. We hypothesize that the high diversity of present-day P. vivax lineages in the Americas originated from successive migratory waves and subsequent admixture between

Increased dead space in face mask continuous positive airway pressure in neonates.

PubMed

Hishikawa, Kenji; Fujinaga, Hideshi; Ito, Yushi

2017-01-01

Continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) by face mask is commonly performed in newborn resuscitation. We evaluated the effect of face mask CPAP on system dead space. Face mask CPAP increases dead space. A CPAP model study. We estimated the volume of the inner space of the mask. We devised a face mask CPAP model, in which the outlet of the mask was covered with plastic; and three modified face mask CPAP models, in which holes were drilled near to the cushion of the covered face mask to alter the air exit. We passed a continuous flow of 21% oxygen through each model and we controlled the inner pressure to 5 cmH 2 O by adjusting the flow-relief valve. To evaluate the ventilation in the inner space of each model, we measured the oxygen concentration rise time, that is, the time needed for the oxygen concentration of each model to reach 35% after the oxygen concentration of the continuous flow was raised from 21% to 40%. The volume of inner space of the face mask was 38.3 ml. Oxygen concentration rise time in the face mask CPAP model was significantly longer at various continuous flow rates and points of the inner space of the face mask compared with that of the modified face mask CPAP model. Our study indicates that face mask CPAP leads to an increase in dead space and a decrease in ventilation efficiency under certain circumstances. Pediatr Pulmonol. 2017;52:107-111. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Online Access to Weather Satellite Imagery Through the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Emery, W.; Baldwin, D.

1998-01-01

Both global area coverage (GAC) and high-resolution picture transmission (HRTP) data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) are made available to laternet users through an online data access system. Older GOES-7 data am also available. Created as a "testbed" data system for NASA's future Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS), this testbed provides an opportunity to test both the technical requirements of an onune'd;ta system and the different ways in which the -general user, community would employ such a system. Initiated in December 1991, the basic data system experienced five major evolutionary changes In response to user requests and requirements. Features added with these changes were the addition of online browse, user subsetting, dynamic image Processing/navigation, a stand-alone data storage system, and movement,from an X-windows graphical user Interface (GUI) to a World Wide Web (WWW) interface. Over Its lifetime, the system has had as many as 2500 registered users. The system on the WWW has had over 2500 hits since October 1995. Many of these hits are by casual users that only take the GIF images directly from the interface screens and do not specifically order digital data. Still, there b a consistent stream of users ordering the navigated image data and related products (maps and so forth). We have recently added a real-time, seven- day, northwestern United States normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) composite that has generated considerable Interest. Index Terms-Data system, earth science, online access, satellite data.

Face-to-face: Perceived personal relevance amplifies face processing

PubMed Central

Pittig, Andre; Schupp, Harald T.; Alpers, Georg W.

2017-01-01

Abstract The human face conveys emotional and social information, but it is not well understood how these two aspects influence face perception. In order to model a group situation, two faces displaying happy, neutral or angry expressions were presented. Importantly, faces were either facing the observer, or they were presented in profile view directed towards, or looking away from each other. In Experiment 1 (n = 64), face pairs were rated regarding perceived relevance, wish-to-interact, and displayed interactivity, as well as valence and arousal. All variables revealed main effects of facial expression (emotional > neutral), face orientation (facing observer > towards > away) and interactions showed that evaluation of emotional faces strongly varies with their orientation. Experiment 2 (n = 33) examined the temporal dynamics of perceptual-attentional processing of these face constellations with event-related potentials. Processing of emotional and neutral faces differed significantly in N170 amplitudes, early posterior negativity (EPN), and sustained positive potentials. Importantly, selective emotional face processing varied as a function of face orientation, indicating early emotion-specific (N170, EPN) and late threat-specific effects (LPP, sustained positivity). Taken together, perceived personal relevance to the observer—conveyed by facial expression and face direction—amplifies emotional face processing within triadic group situations. PMID:28158672

Face-to-face: Perceived personal relevance amplifies face processing.

PubMed

Bublatzky, Florian; Pittig, Andre; Schupp, Harald T; Alpers, Georg W

2017-05-01

The human face conveys emotional and social information, but it is not well understood how these two aspects influence face perception. In order to model a group situation, two faces displaying happy, neutral or angry expressions were presented. Importantly, faces were either facing the observer, or they were presented in profile view directed towards, or looking away from each other. In Experiment 1 (n = 64), face pairs were rated regarding perceived relevance, wish-to-interact, and displayed interactivity, as well as valence and arousal. All variables revealed main effects of facial expression (emotional > neutral), face orientation (facing observer > towards > away) and interactions showed that evaluation of emotional faces strongly varies with their orientation. Experiment 2 (n = 33) examined the temporal dynamics of perceptual-attentional processing of these face constellations with event-related potentials. Processing of emotional and neutral faces differed significantly in N170 amplitudes, early posterior negativity (EPN), and sustained positive potentials. Importantly, selective emotional face processing varied as a function of face orientation, indicating early emotion-specific (N170, EPN) and late threat-specific effects (LPP, sustained positivity). Taken together, perceived personal relevance to the observer-conveyed by facial expression and face direction-amplifies emotional face processing within triadic group situations. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.

The Oxytocin Receptor Gene ( OXTR) and Face Recognition.

PubMed

Verhallen, Roeland J; Bosten, Jenny M; Goodbourn, Patrick T; Lawrance-Owen, Adam J; Bargary, Gary; Mollon, J D

2017-01-01

A recent study has linked individual differences in face recognition to rs237887, a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of the oxytocin receptor gene ( OXTR; Skuse et al., 2014). In that study, participants were assessed using the Warrington Recognition Memory Test for Faces, but performance on Warrington's test has been shown not to rely purely on face recognition processes. We administered the widely used Cambridge Face Memory Test-a purer test of face recognition-to 370 participants. Performance was not significantly associated with rs237887, with 16 other SNPs of OXTR that we genotyped, or with a further 75 imputed SNPs. We also administered three other tests of face processing (the Mooney Face Test, the Glasgow Face Matching Test, and the Composite Face Test), but performance was never significantly associated with rs237887 or with any of the other genotyped or imputed SNPs, after corrections for multiple testing. In addition, we found no associations between OXTR and Autism-Spectrum Quotient scores.

Virtual Reality Astronomy Education Using AAS WorldWide Telescope and Oculus Rift

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Weigel, A. David; Moraitis, Christina D.

2017-01-01

The Boyd E. Christenberry Planetarium at Samford University (Birmingham, AL) offers family friendly, live, and interactive planetarium presentations that educate the public on topics from astronomy basics to current cutting edge astronomical discoveries. With limited funding, it is not possible to provide state of the art planetarium hardware for these community audiences. In a society in which many people, even young children, have access to high resolution smart phones and highly realistic video games, it is important to leverage cutting-edge technology to intrigue young and old minds alike. We use an Oculus Rift virtual reality headset running AAS WorldWide Telescope software to visualize 3D data in a fully immersive environment. We create interactive experiences and videos to highlight astronomical concepts and also to communicate the beauty of our universe. The ease of portability enables us to set up at Virtual Reality (VR) experience at various events, festivals, and even in classrooms to provide a community outreach that a fixed planetarium cannot. This VR experience adds the “wow” factor that encourages children and adults to engage in our various planetarium events to learn more about astronomy and continue to explore the final frontier of space. These VR experiences encourages our college students to participate in our astronomy education resulting in increased interest in STEM fields, particularly physics and math.

Prototyping of Remote Experiment and Exercise Systems for an Engineering Education based on World Wide Web

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Iwatsuki, Masami; Kato, Yoriyuki; Yonekawa, Akira

State-of-the-art Internet technologies allow us to provide advanced and interactive distance education services. However, we could not help but gather students for experiments and exercises in an education for engineering because large-scale equipments and expensive software are required. On the other hand, teleoperation systems with robot manipulator or vehicle via Internet have been developed in the field of robotics. By fusing these two techniques, we can realize remote experiment and exercise systems for the engineering education based on World Wide Web. This paper presents how to construct the remote environment that allows students to take courses on experiment and exercise independently of their locations. By using the proposed system, users can exercise and practice remotely about control of a manipulator and a robot vehicle and programming of image processing.

Facilitating 3D Virtual World Learning Environments Creation by Non-Technical End Users through Template-Based Virtual World Instantiation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Liu, Chang; Zhong, Ying; Ozercan, Sertac; Zhu, Qing

2013-01-01

This paper presents a template-based solution to overcome technical barriers non-technical computer end users face when developing functional learning environments in three-dimensional virtual worlds (3DVW). "iVirtualWorld," a prototype of a platform-independent 3DVW creation tool that implements the proposed solution, facilitates 3DVW…

Anatomy Education Faces Challenges in Pakistan

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Memon, Ismail K.

2009-01-01

Anatomy education in Pakistan is facing many of the same challenges as in other parts of the world. Roughly, a decade ago, all medical and dental colleges in Pakistan emphasized anatomy as a core basic discipline within a traditional medical science curriculum. Now institutions are adopting problem based learning (PBL) teaching philosophies, and…

Capillarity ion concentration polarization as spontaneous desalting mechanism.

PubMed

Park, Sungmin; Jung, Yeonsu; Son, Seok Young; Cho, Inhee; Cho, Youngrok; Lee, Hyomin; Kim, Ho-Young; Kim, Sung Jae

2016-04-01

To overcome a world-wide water shortage problem, numerous desalination methods have been developed with state-of-the-art power efficiency. Here we propose a spontaneous desalting mechanism referred to as the capillarity ion concentration polarization. An ion-depletion zone is spontaneously formed near a nanoporous material by the permselective ion transportation driven by the capillarity of the material, in contrast to electrokinetic ion concentration polarization which achieves the same ion-depletion zone by an external d.c. bias. This capillarity ion concentration polarization device is shown to be capable of desalting an ambient electrolyte more than 90% without any external electrical power sources. Theoretical analysis for both static and transient conditions are conducted to characterize this phenomenon. These results indicate that the capillarity ion concentration polarization system can offer unique and economical approaches for a power-free water purification system.

The Cambridge Face Memory Test: results for neurologically intact individuals and an investigation of its validity using inverted face stimuli and prosopagnosic participants.

PubMed

Duchaine, Brad; Nakayama, Ken

2006-01-01

The two standardized tests of face recognition that are widely used suffer from serious shortcomings [Duchaine, B. & Weidenfeld, A. (2003). An evaluation of two commonly used tests of unfamiliar face recognition. Neuropsychologia, 41, 713-720; Duchaine, B. & Nakayama, K. (2004). Developmental prosopagnosia and the Benton Facial Recognition Test. Neurology, 62, 1219-1220]. Images in the Warrington Recognition Memory for Faces test include substantial non-facial information, and the simultaneous presentation of faces in the Benton Facial Recognition Test allows feature matching. Here, we present results from a new test, the Cambridge Face Memory Test, which builds on the strengths of the previous tests. In the test, participants are introduced to six target faces, and then they are tested with forced choice items consisting of three faces, one of which is a target. For each target face, three test items contain views identical to those studied in the introduction, five present novel views, and four present novel views with noise. There are a total of 72 items, and 50 controls averaged 58. To determine whether the test requires the special mechanisms used to recognize upright faces, we conducted two experiments. We predicted that controls would perform much more poorly when the face images are inverted, and as predicted, inverted performance was much worse with a mean of 42. Next we assessed whether eight prosopagnosics would perform poorly on the upright version. The prosopagnosic mean was 37, and six prosopagnosics scored outside the normal range. In contrast, the Warrington test and the Benton test failed to classify a majority of the prosopagnosics as impaired. These results indicate that the new test effectively assesses face recognition across a wide range of abilities.

The James Webb Space Telescope RealWorld-InWorld Design Challenge: Involving Professionals in a Virtual Classroom

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Masetti, Margaret; Bowers, S.

2011-01-01

Students around the country are becoming experts on the James Webb Space Telescope by designing solutions to two of the design challenges presented by this complex mission. RealWorld-InWorld has two parts; the first (the Real World portion) has high-school students working face to face in their classroom as engineers and scientists. The InWorld phase starts December 15, 2010 as interested teachers and their teams of high school students register to move their work into a 3D multi-user virtual world environment. At the start of this phase, college students from all over the country choose a registered team to lead InWorld. Each InWorld team is also assigned an engineer or scientist mentor. In this virtual world setting, each team refines their design solutions and creates a 3D model of the Webb telescope. InWorld teams will use 21st century tools to collaborate and build in the virtual world environment. Each team will learn, not only from their own team members, but will have the opportunity to interact with James Webb Space Telescope researchers through the virtual world setting, which allows for synchronous interactions. Halfway through the challenge, design solutions will be critiqued and a mystery problem will be introduced for each team. The top five teams will be invited to present their work during a synchronous Education Forum April 14, 2011. The top team will earn scholarships and technology. This is an excellent opportunity for professionals in both astronomy and associated engineering disciplines to become involved with a unique educational program. Besides the chance to mentor a group of interested students, there are many opportunities to interact with the students as a guest, via chats and presentations.

Design and development of an interactive medical teleconsultation system over the World Wide Web.

PubMed

Bai, J; Zhang, Y; Dai, B

1998-06-01

The objective of the medical teleconsultation system presented in this paper is to demonstrate the use of the World Wide Web (WWW) for telemedicine and interactive medical information exchange. The system, which is developed based on Java, could provide several basic Java tools to fulfill the requirements of medical applications, including a file manager, data tool, bulletin board, and digital audio tool. The digital audio tool uses point-to-point structure to enable two physicians to communicate directly through voice. The others use multipoint structure. The file manager manages the medical images stored in the WWW information server, which come from a hospital database. The data tool supports cooperative operations on the medical data between the participating physicians. The bulletin board enables the users to discuss special cases by writing text on the board, send their personal or group diagnostic reports on the cases, and reorganize the reports and store them in its report file for later use. The system provides a hardware-independent platform for physicians to interact with one another as well as to access medical information over the WWW.

WorldWide Telescope and Google Sky: New Technologies to Engage Students and the Public

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Landsberg, R. H.; Subbarao, M. U.; Dettloff, L.

2010-08-01

New, visually rich, astronomical software environments coupled with large web-accessible data sets hold the promise of new and exciting ways to teach, collaborate, and explore the universe. These freeware tools provide contextual views of astronomical objects, real time access to multi-wavelength sky surveys, and, most importantly, the ability to incorporate new data and to produce user created content. This interactive panel examined the capabilities of Google Sky and WorldWide Telescope, and explored case studies of how these tools have been used to create compelling and participatory educational experiences in both formal (i.e., K-12 and undergraduate non-science majors classrooms), and informal (e.g., museum) settings. The overall goal of this session was to stimulate a discussion about future uses of these technologies. Substantial time was allotted for participants to create conceptual designs of learning experiences for use at their home institutions, with feedback provided by the panel members. Activities included technical discussions (e.g., mechanisms for incorporating new data and dissemination tools), exercises in narrative preparation, and a brainstorming session to identify potential future uses of these technologies.

Facing the Crisis: Third World Agriculture in the 1980s.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Singh, Ajit; Tabatabai, Hamid

1990-01-01

Examines how developing nations' agrarian economy fared in the 1980s in the wake of the world economic crisis. Discusses how the economic crisis affected agricultural development and whether the performance of the agrarian economy was responsible for the economic crisis. (JOW)

Genome-Wide Association Studies of Serum Magnesium, Potassium, and Sodium Concentrations Identify Six Loci Influencing Serum Magnesium Levels

PubMed Central

van Rooij, Frank J. A.; Ehret, Georg B.; Boerwinkle, Eric; Felix, Janine F.; Leak, Tennille S.; Harris, Tamara B.; Yang, Qiong; Dehghan, Abbas; Aspelund, Thor; Katz, Ronit; Homuth, Georg; Kocher, Thomas; Rettig, Rainer; Ried, Janina S.; Gieger, Christian; Prucha, Hanna; Pfeufer, Arne; Meitinger, Thomas; Coresh, Josef; Hofman, Albert; Sarnak, Mark J.; Chen, Yii-Der Ida; Uitterlinden, André G.; Chakravarti, Aravinda; Psaty, Bruce M.; van Duijn, Cornelia M.; Kao, W. H. Linda; Witteman, Jacqueline C. M.; Gudnason, Vilmundur; Siscovick, David S.; Fox, Caroline S.; Köttgen, Anna

2010-01-01

Magnesium, potassium, and sodium, cations commonly measured in serum, are involved in many physiological processes including energy metabolism, nerve and muscle function, signal transduction, and fluid and blood pressure regulation. To evaluate the contribution of common genetic variation to normal physiologic variation in serum concentrations of these cations, we conducted genome-wide association studies of serum magnesium, potassium, and sodium concentrations using ∼2.5 million genotyped and imputed common single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 15,366 participants of European descent from the international CHARGE Consortium. Study-specific results were combined using fixed-effects inverse-variance weighted meta-analysis. SNPs demonstrating genome-wide significant (p<5×10−8) or suggestive associations (p<4×10−7) were evaluated for replication in an additional 8,463 subjects of European descent. The association of common variants at six genomic regions (in or near MUC1, ATP2B1, DCDC5, TRPM6, SHROOM3, and MDS1) with serum magnesium levels was genome-wide significant when meta-analyzed with the replication dataset. All initially significant SNPs from the CHARGE Consortium showed nominal association with clinically defined hypomagnesemia, two showed association with kidney function, two with bone mineral density, and one of these also associated with fasting glucose levels. Common variants in CNNM2, a magnesium transporter studied only in model systems to date, as well as in CNNM3 and CNNM4, were also associated with magnesium concentrations in this study. We observed no associations with serum sodium or potassium levels exceeding p<4×10−7. Follow-up studies of newly implicated genomic loci may provide additional insights into the regulation and homeostasis of human serum magnesium levels. PMID:20700443

Application of the MOS-C-V technique to determine impurity concentrations and surface parameters on the diffused face of silicon solar cells

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Weinberg, I.

1975-01-01

The feasibility of using the MOS C-V technique to obtain information regarding impurity and surface state concentrations on the diffused face of silicon solar cells with Ta2O5 coatings is studied. Results indicate that the MOS C-V technique yields useful information concerning surface parameters which contribute to the high, efficiency limiting, surface recombination velocities on the n+ surface of silicon solar cells.

Genome-wide SNP identification, linkage map construction and QTL mapping for seed mineral concentrations and contents in pea (Pisum sativum L.).

PubMed

Ma, Yu; Coyne, Clarice J; Grusak, Michael A; Mazourek, Michael; Cheng, Peng; Main, Dorrie; McGee, Rebecca J

2017-02-13

Marker-assisted breeding is now routinely used in major crops to facilitate more efficient cultivar improvement. This has been significantly enabled by the use of next-generation sequencing technology to identify loci and markers associated with traits of interest. While rich in a range of nutritional components, such as protein, mineral nutrients, carbohydrates and several vitamins, pea (Pisum sativum L.), one of the oldest domesticated crops in the world, remains behind many other crops in the availability of genomic and genetic resources. To further improve mineral nutrient levels in pea seeds requires the development of genome-wide tools. The objectives of this research were to develop these tools by: identifying genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) using genotyping by sequencing (GBS); constructing a high-density linkage map and comparative maps with other legumes, and identifying quantitative trait loci (QTL) for levels of boron, calcium, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, molybdenum, phosphorous, sulfur, and zinc in the seed, as well as for seed weight. In this study, 1609 high quality SNPs were found to be polymorphic between 'Kiflica' and 'Aragorn', two parents of an F 6 -derived recombinant inbred line (RIL) population. Mapping 1683 markers including 75 previously published markers and 1608 SNPs developed from the present study generated a linkage map of size 1310.1 cM. Comparative mapping with other legumes demonstrated that the highest level of synteny was observed between pea and the genome of Medicago truncatula. QTL analysis of the RIL population across two locations revealed at least one QTL for each of the mineral nutrient traits. In total, 46 seed mineral concentration QTLs, 37 seed mineral content QTLs, and 6 seed weight QTLs were discovered. The QTLs explained from 2.4% to 43.3% of the phenotypic variance. The genome-wide SNPs and the genetic linkage map developed in this study permitted QTL identification for pea seed mineral

Learning in a virtual world: experience with using second life for medical education.

PubMed

Wiecha, John; Heyden, Robin; Sternthal, Elliot; Merialdi, Mario

2010-01-23

Virtual worlds are rapidly becoming part of the educational technology landscape. Second Life (SL) is one of the best known of these environments. Although the potential of SL has been noted for health professions education, a search of the world's literature and of the World Wide Web revealed a limited number of formal applications of SL for this purpose and minimal evaluation of educational outcomes. Similarly, the use of virtual worlds for continuing health professional development appears to be largely unreported. We designed and delivered a pilot postgraduate medical education program in the virtual world, Second Life. Our objectives were to: (1) explore the potential of a virtual world for delivering continuing medical education (CME) designed for physicians; (2) determine possible instructional designs using SL for CME; (3) understand the limitations of SL for CME; (4) understand the barriers, solutions, and costs associated with using SL, including required training; and (5) measure participant learning outcomes and feedback. We trained and enrolled 14 primary care physicians in an hour-long, highly interactive event in SL on the topic of type 2 diabetes. Participants completed surveys to measure change in confidence and performance on test cases to assess learning. The post survey also assessed participants' attitudes toward the virtual learning environment. Of the 14 participant physicians, 12 rated the course experience, 10 completed the pre and post confidence surveys, and 10 completed both the pre and post case studies. On a seven-point Likert scale (1, strongly disagree to 7, strongly agree), participants' mean reported confidence increased from pre to post SL event with respect to: selecting insulin for patients with type 2 diabetes (pre = 4.9 to post = 6.5, P= .002); initiating insulin (pre = 5.0 to post = 6.2, P= .02); and adjusting insulin dosing (pre = 5.2 to post = 6.2, P= .02). On test cases, the percent of participants providing a correct

Test and calibration of the Digital World-Wide Standardized Seismograph

USGS Publications Warehouse

Peterson, Jon; Hutt, Charles R.

1982-01-01

During the past decade there has been steady progress in the modernization of the global seismograph network operated by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The World-Wide Standardized Seismograph Network (WWSSN) has been augmented by new stations with advanced instrumentation, including the Seismic Research Observatories (SRO) and the modified High-Gain Long-Period (ASRO) stations. One goal in the modernization effort has been to improve signal resolution in the long-period band. A second goal has been to generate a global digital data base to support contemporary computer-based analysis and research. In 1976, a Panel on Seismograph Networks was established by the Committee on Seismology of the National Academy of Sciences to review progress in network seismology and recommend actions that would lead to an improved global data base for seismology. One recommendation in the Panel report (Engdahl, 1977) called for upgrading selected WWSSN stations by the installation of digital recorders. This was viewed as an economical way of expanding the digital network, which had proven itself to be a very promising new tool for earthquake and explosion research. Funds for the development and assembly of 15 digital recorders were provided to the USGS by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and an ad Inoc panel of scientists was convened by the Committee on Seismology to advise the USGS on the selection of stations to be upgraded and on data recording requirements, A total of 19 digital World-Wide Standardized Seismograph (DWWSS) systems will be operational when all are installed. The additional systems were made available through purchase by the USGS and other organizations; for example, the University of Bergen purchased and installed a DWWSS-type recorder and agreed to furnish the USGS with the data. A list of operational and planned DWWSS network stations is given in Table 1.1.As one might expect, the digital recorder turned out to be somewhat more sophisticated than

Dissociated neural basis of two behavioral hallmarks of holistic face processing: The whole-part effect and composite-face effect.

PubMed

Li, Jin; Huang, Lijie; Song, Yiying; Liu, Jia

2017-07-28

It has been long proposed that our extraordinary face recognition ability stems from holistic face processing. Two widely-used behavioral hallmarks of holistic face processing are the whole-part effect (WPE) and composite-face effect (CFE). However, it remains unknown whether these two effects reflect similar or different aspects of holistic face processing. Here we investigated this question by examining whether the WPE and CFE involved shared or distinct neural substrates in a large sample of participants (N=200). We found that the WPE and CFE showed hemispheric dissociation in the fusiform face area (FFA), that is, the WPE was correlated with face selectivity in the left FFA, while the CFE was correlated with face selectivity in the right FFA. Further, the correlation between the WPE and face selectivity was largely driven by the FFA response to faces, whereas the association between the CFE and face selectivity resulted from suppressed response to objects in the right FFA. Finally, we also observed dissociated correlation patterns of the WPE and CFE in other face-selective regions and across the whole brain. These results suggest that the WPE and CFE may reflect different aspects of holistic face processing, which shed new light on the behavioral dissociations of these two effects demonstrated in literature. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Atypical Development of Face and Greeble Recognition in Autism

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Scherf, K. Suzanne; Behrmann, Marlene; Minshew, Nancy; Luna, Beatriz

2008-01-01

Background: Impaired face processing is a widely documented deficit in autism. Although the origin of this deficit is unclear, several groups have suggested that a lack of perceptual expertise is contributory. We investigated whether individuals with autism develop expertise in visuoperceptual processing of faces and whether any deficiency in such…

Integrated Concentration in Science (iCons): Undergraduate Education Through Interdisciplinary, Team-Based, Real-World Problem Solving

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tuominen, Mark

2013-03-01

Attitude, Skills, Knowledge (ASK) - In this order, these are fundamental characteristics of scientific innovators. Through first-hand practice in using science to unpack and solve complex real-world problems, students can become self-motivated scientific leaders. This presentation describes the pedagogy of a recently developed interdisciplinary undergraduate science education program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst focused on addressing global challenges with scientific solutions. Integrated Concentration in Science (iCons) is an overarching concentration program that supplements the curricula provided within each student's chosen major. iCons is a platform for students to perform student-led research in interdisciplinary collaborative teams. With a schedule of one course per year over four years, the cohort of students move through case studies, analysis of real-world problems, development of potential solutions, integrative communication, laboratory practice, and capstone research projects. In this presentation, a track emphasizing renewable energy science is used to illustrate the iCons pedagogical methods. This includes discussion of a third-year laboratory course in renewable energy that is educationally scaffolded: beginning with a boot camp in laboratory techniques and culminating with student-designed research projects. Among other objectives, this course emphasizes the practice of using reflection and redesign, as a means of generating better solutions and embedding learning for the long term. This work is supported in part by NSF grant DUE-1140805.

The Role of Higher Level Adaptive Coding Mechanisms in the Development of Face Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pimperton, Hannah; Pellicano, Elizabeth; Jeffery, Linda; Rhodes, Gillian

2009-01-01

DevDevelopmental improvements in face identity recognition ability are widely documented, but the source of children's immaturity in face recognition remains unclear. Differences in the way in which children and adults visually represent faces might underlie immaturities in face recognition. Recent evidence of a face identity aftereffect (FIAE),…

Guiding the Next Generation of Forest FACE Experiments with Lessons from the Past

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Norby, Richard

2016-04-01

respond to future CO2 concentrations. The FACE model-data synthesis (FACE-MDS) project challenged 11 terrestrial ecosystem models with data from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory FACE experiment in Tennessee, USA, and Duke FACE in North Carolina, USA. This exercise was valuable in identifying critical model assumptions and evaluating whether the assumptions were supported by the experimental data, and it provided a framework to evaluate forest processes that occur over much longer time frames than the duration of the experiments. The next generation of forest FACE experiments will greatly expand the breadth of our knowledge base on responses to elevated CO2 by investigating responses of mature forest ecosystems in boreal to tropical biomes over a wide range of climatic and edaphic conditions. Our experience with the FACE-MDS has shown the value in initiating the model-data interaction as an integral part of experimental design. The FACE-MDS framework has led to a set of model-guided, cross-site science questions for new FACE experiments, including responses of mature forests; interactions with temperature, water stress, and phosphorus limitation; and the influence of biodiversity. This sets an exciting research agenda for the next decade.

Internet Technology in Magnetic Resonance: A Common Gateway Interface Program for the World-Wide Web NMR Spectrometer

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Buszko, Marian L.; Buszko, Dominik; Wang, Daniel C.

1998-04-01

A custom-written Common Gateway Interface (CGI) program for remote control of an NMR spectrometer using a World Wide Web browser has been described. The program, running on a UNIX workstation, uses multiple processes to handle concurrent tasks of interacting with the user and with the spectrometer. The program's parent process communicates with the browser and sends out commands to the spectrometer; the child process is mainly responsible for data acquisition. Communication between the processes is via the shared memory mechanism. The WWW pages that have been developed for the system make use of the frames feature of web browsers. The CGI program provides an intuitive user interface to the NMR spectrometer, making, in effect, a complex system an easy-to-use Web appliance.

Face transplant: a paradigm change in facial reconstruction.

PubMed

Lantieri, Laurent

2012-01-01

Face transplantation is a new surgical technique that could be considered as a paradigm change in facial reconstruction. In recent years, 17 cases have been realized around the world. The author reviews these cases enlightened by his personal 7 cases.

Mapping face categorization in the human ventral occipitotemporal cortex with direct neural intracranial recordings.

PubMed

Rossion, Bruno; Jacques, Corentin; Jonas, Jacques

2018-02-26

The neural basis of face categorization has been widely investigated with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), identifying a set of face-selective local regions in the ventral occipitotemporal cortex (VOTC). However, indirect recording of neural activity with fMRI is associated with large fluctuations of signal across regions, often underestimating face-selective responses in the anterior VOTC. While direct recording of neural activity with subdural grids of electrodes (electrocorticography, ECoG) or depth electrodes (stereotactic electroencephalography, SEEG) offers a unique opportunity to fill this gap in knowledge, these studies rather reveal widely distributed face-selective responses. Moreover, intracranial recordings are complicated by interindividual variability in neuroanatomy, ambiguity in definition, and quantification of responses of interest, as well as limited access to sulci with ECoG. Here, we propose to combine SEEG in large samples of individuals with fast periodic visual stimulation to objectively define, quantify, and characterize face categorization across the whole VOTC. This approach reconciles the wide distribution of neural face categorization responses with their (right) hemispheric and regional specialization, and reveals several face-selective regions in anterior VOTC sulci. We outline the challenges of this research program to understand the neural basis of face categorization and high-level visual recognition in general. © 2018 New York Academy of Sciences.

The real-world navigator

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Balabanovic, Marko; Becker, Craig; Morse, Sarah K.; Nourbakhsh, Illah R.

1994-01-01

The success of every mobile robot application hinges on the ability to navigate robustly in the real world. The problem of robust navigation is separable from the challenges faced by any particular robot application. We offer the Real-World Navigator as a solution architecture that includes a path planner, a map-based localizer, and a motion control loop that combines reactive avoidance modules with deliberate goal-based motion. Our architecture achieves a high degree of reliability by maintaining and reasoning about an explicit description of positional uncertainty. We provide two implementations of real-world robot systems that incorporate the Real-World Navigator. The Vagabond Project culminated in a robot that successfully navigated a portion of the Stanford University campus. The Scimmer project developed successful entries for the AIAA 1993 Robotics Competition, placing first in one of the two contests entered.

Using Regression to Measure Holistic Face Processing Reveals a Strong Link with Face Recognition Ability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DeGutis, Joseph; Wilmer, Jeremy; Mercado, Rogelio J.; Cohan, Sarah

2013-01-01

Although holistic processing is thought to underlie normal face recognition ability, widely discrepant reports have recently emerged about this link in an individual differences context. Progress in this domain may have been impeded by the widespread use of subtraction scores, which lack validity due to their contamination with control condition…

Understanding Leadership in Schools Facing Challenging Circumstances: A Chilean Case Study

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ahumada, Luis; Galdames, Sergio; Clarke, Simon

2016-01-01

During the last 10 years, research into schools facing challenging circumstances has attracted the attention of researchers around the world. The aim of this study was to understand the challenges that school leaders face as they per form their work, the nature of the context in which these challenges arise, the strategies school leaders adopt to…

Age synthesis and estimation via faces: a survey.

PubMed

Fu, Yun; Guo, Guodong; Huang, Thomas S

2010-11-01

Human age, as an important personal trait, can be directly inferred by distinct patterns emerging from the facial appearance. Derived from rapid advances in computer graphics and machine vision, computer-based age synthesis and estimation via faces have become particularly prevalent topics recently because of their explosively emerging real-world applications, such as forensic art, electronic customer relationship management, security control and surveillance monitoring, biometrics, entertainment, and cosmetology. Age synthesis is defined to rerender a face image aesthetically with natural aging and rejuvenating effects on the individual face. Age estimation is defined to label a face image automatically with the exact age (year) or the age group (year range) of the individual face. Because of their particularity and complexity, both problems are attractive yet challenging to computer-based application system designers. Large efforts from both academia and industry have been devoted in the last a few decades. In this paper, we survey the complete state-of-the-art techniques in the face image-based age synthesis and estimation topics. Existing models, popular algorithms, system performances, technical difficulties, popular face aging databases, evaluation protocols, and promising future directions are also provided with systematic discussions.

Fast 3D Net Expeditions: Tools for Effective Scientific Collaboration on the World Wide Web

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Watson, Val; Chancellor, Marisa K. (Technical Monitor)

1996-01-01

Two new technologies, the FASTexpedition and Remote FAST, have been developed that provide remote, 3D (three dimensional), high resolution, dynamic, interactive viewing of scientific data. The FASTexpedition permits one to access scientific data from the World Wide Web, take guided expeditions through the data, and continue with self controlled expeditions through the data. Remote FAST permits collaborators at remote sites to simultaneously view an analysis of scientific data being controlled by one of the collaborators. Control can be transferred between sites. These technologies are now being used for remote collaboration in joint university, industry, and NASA projects. Also, NASA Ames Research Center has initiated a project to make scientific data and guided expeditions through the data available as FASTexpeditions on the World Wide Web for educational purposes. Previously, remote visualization of dynamic data was done using video format (transmitting pixel information) such as video conferencing or MPEG (Motion Picture Expert Group) movies on the Internet. The concept for this new technology is to send the raw data (e.g., grids, vectors, and scalars) along with viewing scripts over the Internet and have the pixels generated by a visualization tool running on the viewers local workstation. The visualization tool that is currently used is FAST (Flow Analysis Software Toolkit). The advantages of this new technology over using video format are: (1) The visual is much higher in resolution (1280x1024 pixels with 24 bits of color) than typical video format transmitted over the network. (2) The form of the visualization can be controlled interactively (because the viewer is interactively controlling the visualization tool running on his workstation). (3) A rich variety of guided expeditions through the data can be included easily. (4) A capability is provided for other sites to see a visual analysis of one site as the analysis is interactively performed. Control of

From Caregivers to Peers: Puberty Shapes Human Face Perception.

PubMed

Picci, Giorgia; Scherf, K Suzanne

2016-11-01

Puberty prepares mammals to sexually reproduce during adolescence. It is also hypothesized to invoke a social metamorphosis that prepares adolescents to take on adult social roles. We provide the first evidence to support this hypothesis in humans and show that pubertal development retunes the face-processing system from a caregiver bias to a peer bias. Prior to puberty, children exhibit enhanced recognition for adult female faces. With puberty, superior recognition emerges for peer faces that match one's pubertal status. As puberty progresses, so does the peer recognition bias. Adolescents become better at recognizing faces with a pubertal status similar to their own. These findings reconceptualize the adolescent "dip" in face recognition by showing that it is a recalibration of the face-processing system away from caregivers toward peers. Thus, in addition to preparing the physical body for sexual reproduction, puberty shapes the perceptual system for processing the social world in new ways. © The Author(s) 2016.

New World View

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bainbridge, William Sims

This chapter reports the wide range of ideas in a pair of major scientific conference meetings held inside the most popular virtual world, World of Warcraft (WoW), May 9 and May 10, 2008, plus the challenges of organizing these online events. More than a hundred scholars and scientists contributed to each session, the first covering research on World of Warcraft, and the second examining how virtual worlds fit into the larger world of human experience. A third session, held on May 11, was the starting point for the concluding chapter of this volume. This chapter describes how WoW and other virtual worlds can be used as laboratories for studying human behavior, using both qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and the affordances of virtual worlds can be used to support scientific communication (Bainbridge 2007, in press).

Face averages enhance user recognition for smartphone security.

PubMed

Robertson, David J; Kramer, Robin S S; Burton, A Mike

2015-01-01

Our recognition of familiar faces is excellent, and generalises across viewing conditions. However, unfamiliar face recognition is much poorer. For this reason, automatic face recognition systems might benefit from incorporating the advantages of familiarity. Here we put this to the test using the face verification system available on a popular smartphone (the Samsung Galaxy). In two experiments we tested the recognition performance of the smartphone when it was encoded with an individual's 'face-average'--a representation derived from theories of human face perception. This technique significantly improved performance for both unconstrained celebrity images (Experiment 1) and for real faces (Experiment 2): users could unlock their phones more reliably when the device stored an average of the user's face than when they stored a single image. This advantage was consistent across a wide variety of everyday viewing conditions. Furthermore, the benefit did not reduce the rejection of imposter faces. This benefit is brought about solely by consideration of suitable representations for automatic face recognition, and we argue that this is just as important as development of matching algorithms themselves. We propose that this representation could significantly improve recognition rates in everyday settings.

Face Averages Enhance User Recognition for Smartphone Security

PubMed Central

Robertson, David J.; Kramer, Robin S. S.; Burton, A. Mike

2015-01-01

Our recognition of familiar faces is excellent, and generalises across viewing conditions. However, unfamiliar face recognition is much poorer. For this reason, automatic face recognition systems might benefit from incorporating the advantages of familiarity. Here we put this to the test using the face verification system available on a popular smartphone (the Samsung Galaxy). In two experiments we tested the recognition performance of the smartphone when it was encoded with an individual’s ‘face-average’ – a representation derived from theories of human face perception. This technique significantly improved performance for both unconstrained celebrity images (Experiment 1) and for real faces (Experiment 2): users could unlock their phones more reliably when the device stored an average of the user’s face than when they stored a single image. This advantage was consistent across a wide variety of everyday viewing conditions. Furthermore, the benefit did not reduce the rejection of imposter faces. This benefit is brought about solely by consideration of suitable representations for automatic face recognition, and we argue that this is just as important as development of matching algorithms themselves. We propose that this representation could significantly improve recognition rates in everyday settings. PMID:25807251

Face Masks and Cough Etiquette Reduce the Cough Aerosol Concentration of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in People with Cystic Fibrosis.

PubMed

Wood, Michelle E; Stockwell, Rebecca E; Johnson, Graham R; Ramsay, Kay A; Sherrard, Laura J; Jabbour, Nassib; Ballard, Emma; O'Rourke, Peter; Kidd, Timothy J; Wainwright, Claire E; Knibbs, Luke D; Sly, Peter D; Morawska, Lidia; Bell, Scott C

2018-02-01

People with cystic fibrosis (CF) generate Pseudomonas aeruginosa in droplet nuclei during coughing. The use of surgical masks has been recommended in healthcare settings to minimize pathogen transmission between patients with CF. To determine if face masks and cough etiquette reduce viable P. aeruginosa aerosolized during coughing. Twenty-five adults with CF and chronic P. aeruginosa infection were recruited. Participants performed six talking and coughing maneuvers, with or without face masks (surgical and N95) and hand covering the mouth when coughing (cough etiquette) in an aerosol-sampling device. An Andersen Cascade Impactor was used to sample the aerosol at 2 meters from each participant. Quantitative sputum and aerosol bacterial cultures were performed, and participants rated the mask comfort levels during the cough maneuvers. During uncovered coughing (reference maneuver), 19 of 25 (76%) participants produced aerosols containing P. aeruginosa, with a positive correlation found between sputum P. aeruginosa concentration (measured as cfu/ml) and aerosol P. aeruginosa colony-forming units. There was a reduction in aerosol P. aeruginosa load during coughing with a surgical mask, coughing with an N95 mask, and cough etiquette compared with uncovered coughing (P < 0.001). A similar reduction in total colony-forming units was observed for both masks during coughing; yet, participants rated the surgical masks as more comfortable (P = 0.013). Cough etiquette provided approximately half the reduction of viable aerosols of the mask interventions during voluntary coughing. Talking was a low viable aerosol-producing activity. Face masks reduce cough-generated P. aeruginosa aerosols, with the surgical mask providing enhanced comfort. Cough etiquette was less effective at reducing viable aerosols.

Amorphous In-Ga-Zn-O Powder with High Gas Selectivity towards Wide Range Concentration of C₂H₅OH.

PubMed

Chen, Hongxiang; Jiang, Wei; Zhu, Lianfeng; Yao, Youwei

2017-05-24

Amorphous indium gallium zinc oxide (a-IGZO) powder was prepared by typical solution-based process and post-annealing process. The sample was used as sensor for detecting C₂H₅OH, H₂, and CO. Gas-sensing performance was found to be highly sensitive to C₂H₅OH gas in a wide range of concentration (0.5-1250 ppm) with the response of 2.0 towards 0.5 ppm and 89.2 towards 1250 ppm. Obvious difference of response towards C₂H₅OH, H₂, and CO was found that the response e.g., was 33.20, 6.64, and 2.84 respectively at the concentration of 200 ppm. The response time and recovery time of was 32 s and 14 s respectively towards 200 ppm concentration of C₂H₅OH gas under heating voltage of 6.5 V.

Wide-Field Plate Database

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tsvetkov, M. K.; Stavrev, K. Y.; Tsvetkova, K. P.; Semkov, E. H.; Mutatov, A. S.

The Wide-Field Plate Database (WFPDB) and the possibilities for its application as a research tool in observational astronomy are presented. Currently the WFPDB comprises the descriptive data for 400 000 archival wide field photographic plates obtained with 77 instruments, from a total of 1 850 000 photographs stored in 269 astronomical archives all over the world since the end of last century. The WFPDB is already accessible for the astronomical community, now only in batch mode through user requests sent by e-mail. We are working on on-line interactive access to the data via INTERNET from Sofia and parallel from the Centre de Donnees Astronomiques de Strasbourg. (Initial information can be found on World Wide Web homepage URL http://www.wfpa.acad.bg.) The WFPDB may be useful in studies of a variety of astronomical objects and phenomena, andespecially for long-term investigations of variable objects and for multi-wavelength research. We have analysed the data in the WFPDB in order to derive the overall characteristics of the totality of wide-field observations, such as the sky coverage, the distributions by observation time and date, by spectral band, and by object type. We have also examined the totality of wide-field observations from point of view of their quality, availability and digitisation. The usefulness of the WFPDB is demonstrated by the results of identification and investigation of the photometrical behaviour of optical analogues of gamma-ray bursts.

The use of the World Wide Web by medical journals in 2003 and 2005: an observational study.

PubMed

Schriger, David L; Ouk, Sripha; Altman, Douglas G

2007-01-01

The 2- to 6-page print journal article has been the standard for 200 years, yet this format severely limits the amount of detailed information that can be conveyed. The World Wide Web provides a low-cost option for posting extended text and supplementary information. It also can enhance the experience of journal editors, reviewers, readers, and authors through added functionality (eg, online submission and peer review, postpublication critique, and e-mail notification of table of contents.) Our aim was to characterize ways that journals were using the World Wide Web in 2005 and note changes since 2003. We analyzed the Web sites of 138 high-impact print journals in 3 ways. First, we compared the print and Web versions of March 2003 and 2005 issues of 28 journals (20 of which were randomly selected from the 138) to determine how often articles were published Web only and how often print articles were augmented by Web-only supplements. Second, we examined what functions were offered by each journal Web site. Third, for journals that offered Web pages for reader commentary about each article, we analyzed the number of comments and characterized these comments. Fifty-six articles (7%) in 5 journals were Web only. Thirteen of the 28 journals had no supplementary online content. By 2005, several journals were including Web-only supplements in >20% of their papers. Supplementary methods, tables, and figures predominated. The use of supplementary material increased by 5% from 2% to 7% in the 20-journal random sample from 2003 to 2005. Web sites had similar functionality with an emphasis on linking each article to related material and e-mailing readers about activity related to each article. There was little evidence of journals using the Web to provide readers an interactive experience with the data or with each other. Seventeen of the 138 journals offered rapid-response pages. Only 18% of eligible articles had any comments after 5 months. Journal Web sites offer similar

Raising Children Who Care for Our World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

O'Brien, Leigh M.

2007-01-01

If global warming has an upside, it may be the development of an enhanced awareness of the environment and the dangers faced due to profligate and destructive habits. The ways in which most people live in the industrialized world separate those from the natural world and hence make it difficult for them to understand and care about the planet that…

Facing the Challenges of Educational Reform in the Arab World

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Karami Akkary, Rima

2014-01-01

This paper pinpoints and discusses key aspects of the current approaches to school reform in the Arab world against the backdrop of what is accepted as the best practice in the international literature on effective school reform and educational change. The main goal of the paper is to highlight deeply ingrained assumptions and practices that are…

Model-data synthesis for the next generation of forest free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments.

PubMed

Norby, Richard J; De Kauwe, Martin G; Domingues, Tomas F; Duursma, Remko A; Ellsworth, David S; Goll, Daniel S; Lapola, David M; Luus, Kristina A; MacKenzie, A Rob; Medlyn, Belinda E; Pavlick, Ryan; Rammig, Anja; Smith, Benjamin; Thomas, Rick; Thonicke, Kirsten; Walker, Anthony P; Yang, Xiaojuan; Zaehle, Sönke

2016-01-01

The first generation of forest free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) experiments has successfully provided deeper understanding about how forests respond to an increasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Located in aggrading stands in the temperate zone, they have provided a strong foundation for testing critical assumptions in terrestrial biosphere models that are being used to project future interactions between forest productivity and the atmosphere, despite the limited inference space of these experiments with regards to the range of global ecosystems. Now, a new generation of FACE experiments in mature forests in different biomes and over a wide range of climate space and biodiversity will significantly expand the inference space. These new experiments are: EucFACE in a mature Eucalyptus stand on highly weathered soil in subtropical Australia; AmazonFACE in a highly diverse, primary rainforest in Brazil; BIFoR-FACE in a 150-yr-old deciduous woodland stand in central England; and SwedFACE proposed in a hemiboreal, Pinus sylvestris stand in Sweden. We now have a unique opportunity to initiate a model-data interaction as an integral part of experimental design and to address a set of cross-site science questions on topics including responses of mature forests; interactions with temperature, water stress, and phosphorus limitation; and the influence of biodiversity. © UT-Battelle, LLC New Phytologist © 2015 New Phytologist Trust.

Model-data synthesis for the next generation of forest free-air CO 2 enrichment (FACE) experiments

DOE PAGES

Norby, Richard J.; De Kauwe, Martin G.; Domingues, Tomas F.; ...

2015-08-06

The first generation of forest free-air CO 2 enrichment (FACE) experiments has successfully provided deeper understanding about how forests respond to an increasing CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere. Located in aggrading stands in the temperate zone, they have provided a strong foundation for testing critical assumptions in terrestrial biosphere models that are being used to project future interactions between forest productivity and the atmosphere, despite the limited inference space of these experiments with regards to the range of global ecosystems. Now, a new generation of FACE experiments in mature forests in different biomes and over a wide range ofmore » climate space and biodiversity will significantly expand the inference space. These new experiments are: EucFACE in a mature Eucalyptus stand on highly weathered soil in subtropical Australia; AmazonFACE in a highly diverse, primary rainforest in Brazil; BIFoR-FACE in a 150-yr-old deciduous woodland stand in central England; and SwedFACE proposed in a hemiboreal, Pinus sylvestris stand in Sweden. We now have a unique opportunity to initiate a model–data interaction as an integral part of experimental design and to address a set of cross-site science questions on topics including responses of mature forests; interactions with temperature, water stress, and phosphorus limitation; and the influence of biodiversity.« less

Model-data synthesis for the next generation of forest free-air CO 2 enrichment (FACE) experiments

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Norby, Richard J.; De Kauwe, Martin G.; Domingues, Tomas F.

The first generation of forest free-air CO 2 enrichment (FACE) experiments has successfully provided deeper understanding about how forests respond to an increasing CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere. Located in aggrading stands in the temperate zone, they have provided a strong foundation for testing critical assumptions in terrestrial biosphere models that are being used to project future interactions between forest productivity and the atmosphere, despite the limited inference space of these experiments with regards to the range of global ecosystems. Now, a new generation of FACE experiments in mature forests in different biomes and over a wide range ofmore » climate space and biodiversity will significantly expand the inference space. These new experiments are: EucFACE in a mature Eucalyptus stand on highly weathered soil in subtropical Australia; AmazonFACE in a highly diverse, primary rainforest in Brazil; BIFoR-FACE in a 150-yr-old deciduous woodland stand in central England; and SwedFACE proposed in a hemiboreal, Pinus sylvestris stand in Sweden. We now have a unique opportunity to initiate a model–data interaction as an integral part of experimental design and to address a set of cross-site science questions on topics including responses of mature forests; interactions with temperature, water stress, and phosphorus limitation; and the influence of biodiversity.« less

Learning in a Virtual World: Experience With Using Second Life for Medical Education

PubMed Central

Heyden, Robin; Sternthal, Elliot; Merialdi, Mario

2010-01-01

Background Virtual worlds are rapidly becoming part of the educational technology landscape. Second Life (SL) is one of the best known of these environments. Although the potential of SL has been noted for health professions education, a search of the world’s literature and of the World Wide Web revealed a limited number of formal applications of SL for this purpose and minimal evaluation of educational outcomes. Similarly, the use of virtual worlds for continuing health professional development appears to be largely unreported. Methods We designed and delivered a pilot postgraduate medical education program in the virtual world, Second Life. Our objectives were to: (1) explore the potential of a virtual world for delivering continuing medical education (CME) designed for physicians; (2) determine possible instructional designs using SL for CME; (3) understand the limitations of SL for CME; (4) understand the barriers, solutions, and costs associated with using SL, including required training; and (5) measure participant learning outcomes and feedback. We trained and enrolled 14 primary care physicians in an hour-long, highly interactive event in SL on the topic of type 2 diabetes. Participants completed surveys to measure change in confidence and performance on test cases to assess learning. The post survey also assessed participants’ attitudes toward the virtual learning environment. Results Of the 14 participant physicians, 12 rated the course experience, 10 completed the pre and post confidence surveys, and 10 completed both the pre and post case studies. On a seven-point Likert scale (1, strongly disagree to 7, strongly agree), participants’ mean reported confidence increased from pre to post SL event with respect to: selecting insulin for patients with type 2 diabetes (pre = 4.9 to post = 6.5, P= .002); initiating insulin (pre = 5.0 to post = 6.2, P= .02); and adjusting insulin dosing (pre = 5.2 to post = 6.2, P= .02). On test cases, the percent of

Creation and utilization of a World Wide Web based space radiation effects code: SIREST

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Singleterry, R. C. Jr; Wilson, J. W.; Shinn, J. L.; Tripathi, R. K.; Thibeault, S. A.; Noor, A. K.; Cucinotta, F. A.; Badavi, F. F.; Chang, C. K.; Qualls, G. D.;

How To Save the World: Through Critical Thinking.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center