A PLATO lesson to teach begin blocks.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

A PLATO lesson on information structures /

"UIUCDCS-R-74-615"

A flowchart-to-source-code conversion program for GPSS/360 /

Originally presented as the author's thesis (M.S.), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

GRASS: remote facilities guide,

"COO-1469-0188."

The PASCAL series : a PLATO lesson sequence /

Typescript.

Recurse : a Plato lesson on recursion /

Bibliography: p. 62.

Differences between theoretical predictions and operational performance in a stock control application

Over the past decade, several experienced Operational Researchers have advanced the view that the theoretical aspects of model building have raced ahead of the ability of people to use them. Consequently, the impact of Operational Research on commercial organisations and the public sector is limited, and many systems fail to achieve their anticipated benefits in full. The primary objective of this study is to examine a complex interactive Stock Control system, and identify the reasons for the differences between the theoretical expectations and the operational performance. The methodology used is to hypothesise all the possible factors which could cause a divergence between theory and practice, and to evaluate numerically the effect each of these factors has on two main control indices - Service Level and Average Stock Value. Both analytical and empirical methods are used, and simulation is employed extensively. The factors are divided into two main categories for analysis - theoretical imperfections in the model, and the usage of the system by Buyers. No evidence could be found in the literature of any previous attempts to place the differences between theory and practice in a system in quantitative perspective nor, more specifically, to study the effects of Buyer/computer interaction in a Stock Control system. The study reveals that, in general, the human factors influencing performance are of a much higher order of magnitude than the theoretical factors, thus providing objective evidence to support the original premise. The most important finding is that, by judicious intervention into an automatic stock control algorithm, it is possible for Buyers to produce results which not only attain but surpass the algorithmic predictions. However, the complexity and behavioural recalcitrance of these systems are such that an innately numerate, enquiring type of Buyer needs to be inducted to realise the performance potential of the overall man/computer system.

The difficulty of measuring culture and diversity. Comparison of three international models of cultural measurement: FCS-2009, ESSnet-2012 and CAB-2015

The growing interest in quantifying the cultural and creative industries, visualize the economic contribution of activities related to culture demands first of all the construction of internationally comparable analysis frameworks. Currently there are three major bodies which address this issue and whose comparative study is the focus of this article: the UNESCO Framework for Cultural Statistics (FCS-2009), the European Framework for Cultural Statistics (ESSnet-Culture 2012) and the methodological resource of the “Convenio Andrés Bello” group for working with the Satellite Accounts on Culture in Ibero-America (CAB-2015). Cultural sector measurements provide the information necessary for correct planning of cultural policies which in turn leads to sustaining industries and promoting cultural diversity. The text identifies the existing differences in the three models and three levels of analysis, the sectors, the cultural activities and the criteria that each one uses in order to determine the distribution of the activities by sector. The end result leaves the impossibility of comparing cultural statistics of countries that implement different frameworks.

El impacto de la crisis en la industria cinematográfica en Europa

Este trabajo analiza el impacto que ha generado la crisis económica y financiera más reciente en las industrias cinematográficas de siete países miembros de la Unión Europea. Las conclusiones señalan que, en efecto, la crisis ha impactado negativamente en las industrias de España e Italia, y muy gravemente en la de Portugal, pero en el lado contrario, la del Reino Unido ha experimentado un crecimiento apreciable y las de Francia y Alemania también lo han hecho, aunque en menor medida. Y en segundo lugar, es muy notable la escasa colaboración alcanzada entre los agentes europeos.

Building autonomous sensitive artificial listeners (Extended abstract)

This paper describes a substantial effort to build a real-time interactive multimodal dialogue system with a focus on emotional and non-verbal interaction capabilities. The work is motivated by the aim to provide technology with competences in perceiving and producing the emotional and non-verbal behaviours required to sustain a conversational dialogue. We present the Sensitive Artificial Listener (SAL) scenario as a setting which seems particularly suited for the study of emotional and non-verbal behaviour, since it requires only very limited verbal understanding on the part of the machine. This scenario allows us to concentrate on non-verbal capabilities without having to address at the same time the challenges of spoken language understanding, task modeling etc. We first summarise three prototype versions of the SAL scenario, in which the behaviour of the Sensitive Artificial Listener characters was determined by a human operator. These prototypes served the purpose of verifying the effectiveness of the SAL scenario and allowed us to collect data required for building system components for analysing and synthesising the respective behaviours. We then describe the fully autonomous integrated real-time system we created, which combines incremental analysis of user behaviour, dialogue management, and synthesis of speaker and listener behaviour of a SAL character displayed as a virtual agent. We discuss principles that should underlie the evaluation of SAL-type systems. Since the system is designed for modularity and reuse, and since it is publicly available, the SAL system has potential as a joint research tool in the affective computing research community.

Arquitetura híbrida com DSP e FPGA para implementação de controladores de filtros ativos de potência

The presence of non-linear loads at a point in the distribution system may deform voltage waveform due to the consumption of non-sinusoidal currents. The use of active power filters allows significant reduction of the harmonic content in the supply current. However, the processing of digital control structures for these filters may require high performance hardware, particularly for reference currents calculation. This work describes the development of hardware structures with high processing capability for application in active power filters. In this sense, it considers an architecture that allows parallel processing using programmable logic devices. The developed structure uses a hybrid model using a DSP and an FPGA. The DSP is used for the acquisition of current and voltage signals, calculation of fundamental current related controllers and PWM generation. The FPGA is used for intensive signal processing, such as the harmonic compensators. In this way, from the experimental analysis, significant reductions of the processing time are achieved when compared to traditional approaches using only DSP. The experimental results validate the designed structure and these results are compared with other ones from architectures reported in the literature.

Is there change over time in the season-of-birth effect for schizophrenia? Data from the southern hemisphere

The aim of this paper is to examine distributions of schizophrenia and general population births over time in order to determine whether (a) the pattern has changed over time, (b) any pattern was similar for both males and females, and (c) whether there is any indication that there is any relationship between the changes in pattern between schizophrenia and general population births. Birth month and year for 7807 individuals with ICD8/9 schizophrenia were gained from the Queensland Mental Health Statistical System for 1914-1975. Monthly births for the general population in Queensland for the same period were obtained from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. For each decade we obtained two comparisons, (1) between two 'seasons' (summer-autumn/winter-spring), and (2) between the third (coldest) quarter and the remaining quarters. Based on expected contrasts from general population proportions, odds ratios and their confidence intervals were used to analyse these comparisons for all subjects, and for males and females separately. The seasonality found in our previous studies was again evident (OR 1.09; 95% CI= 1.01-1.17). However there was no significant change in its pattern over time either for the total group or for males and females separately. When the general population births alone were examined using the same contrasts, seasonality was also observed, but here there were fluctuations over time. These results suggest that exposures linked to changes in general population births over time should be examined in disorders such as schizophrenia which demonstrate seasonality in births. The Stanley Foundation supported this project.

Decreased perinatal sunshine duration is associated with increased non-affective but not affective psychosis birth rates

We have previously found an association between variations in schizophrenia birth rates and varyinglevels of perinatal sunshine duration. This study examines whether such an association can also be found for Ža. affective psychosis, and Žb. broadly defined nonaffective psychoses. Data for individuals born between 1931 and 1970 in Australia with ICD9 Other PsychosisŽ295–299.were obtained from the Queensland Mental Health Statistical System. ‘Affective psychosis’ included affective psychosis, schizo-affective psychosis, and depressive and excitative non-organic psychoses. ‘Non-affective psychosis’ included chizophrenia, paranoid disorders and other non-organic psychoses. Those receiving both affective and non-affective psychotic diagnoses were excluded. Rates per 10,000 live monthly general population births were calculated. For each month, we assessed the agreementŽusing the kappa statistic. between trends in Ža. birth rates and Žb. long-term trends in seasonally adjusted perinatal sunshine duration. The analyses were performed separately for males and females. There were 6265 with non-affective psychosis ŽMs3964 rate 66r10,000; Fs2299 44r10,000. and 2858 with affective psychosisŽMs1392 24r10,000; Fs1466 28r10,000.. There were no significant associations between Ža. affective psychosis birth rates for either males or females and Žb. sunshine duration. There was a significant association between nonaffective psychosis birth rates for males only and Žb. sunshine duration Žkappas0.15 p-0.001.. This suggests that, as a risk factor, the effect of reduced perinatal sunshine is specifically associated with males who develop non-affective psychosis. The Stanley Foundation supported this project.

Implementing interactive computing in an object-oriented environment

Statistical computing when input/output is driven by a Graphical User Interface is considered. A proposal is made for automatic control ofcomputational flow to ensure that only strictly required computationsare actually carried on. The computational flow is modeled by a directed graph for implementation in any object-oriented programming language with symbolic manipulation capabilities. A complete implementation example is presented to compute and display frequency based piecewise linear density estimators such as histograms or frequency polygons.

Burden of Diabetes in Iowa 1991-2009, Final Report, May 2010

The Iowa Diabetes Prevention and Control Program provides educational opportunities for health care providers via the Iowa Communications Network interactive fiber optic system. The program also certifies diabetes outpatient education programs in Iowa based on minimum criteria for quality programs. In Iowa during the past 20 years, the prevalence rate of diagnosed diabetes increased dramatically among adults: Between 1991 and 2009 the crude diabetes prevalence rate rose by 84%, from 3.8% to 7.0%. Between these years, the age‐adjusted adult diagnosed diabetes prevalence rate increased by 64%, rising from 3.7% to 6.4%. During the 18 years 1991‐93 through 2006‐08, the number of Iowa adults with diagnosed diabetes more than doubled, increasing from 78,000 to 162,000. While the Iowa Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), upon which the numbers cited above are based, provides reliable state‐level self‐reported data on adults with diagnosed diabetes, it is unable to provide estimates of undiagnosed diabetes. National estimates put the prevalence of undiagnosed adult diabetes at about 5%, raising the estimated adult diabetes prevalence rate in Iowa to 12% (280,000 adults) (Cowie,2009). Another 5% of all Iowa adults are estimated to have diagnosed pre‐diabetes, while 25% of all Iowa adults, based on national estimates from the 2005‐06 National Health and Nutrition and Examination Survey (NHANES), likely have undiagnosed pre‐diabetes. (Cowie, 2009)