小学儿童空间物体位置编码的实验研究

As a key issue in spatial cognitive developmental research, the coding of object location plays an important role in children's cognitive development. The development of location coding is a precondition for children's adaptation to their environments, and the development of corresponding ability could enhance children's adaptation ability and improve their synthetic diathesis. In this paper, under the improved paradigm of object searching, 7-, 9- and 11-year-olds of urban primary school students were involved in two studies including the total of four experiments. The children were examined upon the ability to encode target location in terms of the distance between two landmarks, three points on a line, the intersection of two lines, or the corresponding points on two parallel lines. The experiments were designed to explore the primary school children's cognitive developmental process upon spatial object location and the correlative restricting factors. From the studies, the following conclusions were drawn: 1)The ability of 7-year-olds to represent target location in terms of the relationships of points and lines is in the inceptive stage and appears unstable. Meanwhile, the same ability of 9-year-olds is in a state of fast developing. The 9-year-olds' performance depends on how difficult the task is. It is stable when task is easy while unstable when task becomes difficult. The ability of 11-year-olds reaches much-developed state and the group's performance is independent of the difficulty of tasks. 2) The correlate coefficient is significant between Raven Standard Inference ability levels and the performance of representing target location in terms of the relationships of points. Those children with good performance in Raven Standard Inference Test have good performance in target location coding. The case is true for all different age groups. As of the task in terms of the relationships of lines, the correlate coefficient between Raven Standard Inference ability levels and children's performance of representing target location is found significant only for the 7-year-olds' group. The case is not true for the groups of 9- and 11-year-olds. It is also found that the correlate coefficient is significant between the sum of performance and Raven Standard Inference ability levels, and that is true for all age groups. 3) Effects from task variable exist upon children's above-mentioned cognitive performance. The effects are different according to different difficulty levels of tasks. Also, they are different according to the different ages. 4) The subjects who failed in the 'no cues for encoding given' situation were able to improve their performances when the cues of encoding were given. Therefore it is possible to improve the primary school children's corresponding cognitive performance by providing the cues of encoding. 5) Two kinds of efficient strategies were used to solve the problem. They are trial-comparison strategy and anticipation-directed strategy.

对癌症生存者应对资源的研究

A survey study of cancer survivors was conducted to explore the coping resources, which buffers the life of cancer survivors against stressful situation. Participants reported coping strategies, positive affect and negative affect, personality, perceived social support, fighting spirit and helpless/hopeless as well as quality of life through a set of self-assessment questionnaire. The results indicated that the frequency of coping strategies used by cancer survivors from high to low were: growing, problem solving, seeking support,self-controlling, wishful thinking, and distancing. The correlational analysis indicated that among the six sets of coping strategies, growing was positively correlated most strongly with most of the dimensions in quality of life as well as positive affect. Among the five personality, Neuroticism was positively correlated most strongly with helpless/hopeless and negative affect; and was negatively correlated most strongly with fighting spirit and positive affect. Extraversion was positively correlated most strongly with positive affect and negatively correlated most strongly with helpless/hopeless; Agreeableness was negatively correlated most strongly with negative affect; Conscientiousness was positively correlated most strongly with fighting spirit. Subjects with higher score in quality of life reported higher frequency of coping strategies in growing and problem solving and less in wishful thinking. They also reported higher scores in Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness as well as lower scores in Neuroticism. The regression analysis displayed that not negative affect but positive affect entered the regression model when all the psychological and social variables in the study were accounted for. Taken together, these data suggested that, growing was the most effective coping strategy among the six sets of strategies for cancer survivors to improve quality of life, to maintain positive affect and to enhance fighting spirit. Neuroticism was vulnerable to resist stressors; Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were stress-resisted factors. Positive affect may has more adaptational significance than negative affect during chronic stress. These data also implicated that positive affect should be paid more attention to in coping research.

Motivated Action Theory: A Formal Theory of Causal Reasoning

When we reason about change over time, causation provides an implicit preference: we prefer sequences of situations in which one situation leads causally to the next, rather than sequences in which one situation follows another at random and without causal connections. In this paper, we explore the problem of temporal reasoning --- reasoning about change over time --- and the crucial role that causation plays in our intuitions. We examine previous approaches to temporal reasoning, and their shortcomings, in light of this analysis. We propose a new system for causal reasoning, motivated action theory, which builds upon causation as a crucial preference creterion. Motivated action theory solves the traditional problems of both forward and backward reasoning, and additionally provides a basis for a new theory of explanation.

The Grasping Problem: Toward Task-Level Programming for an Articulated Hand

This report presents a system for generating a stable, feasible, and reachable grasp of a polyhedral object. A set of contact points on the object is found that can result in a stable grasp; a feasible grasp is found in which the robot contacts the object at those contact points; and a path is constructed from the initial configuration of the robot to the stable, feasible final grasp configuration. The algorithm described in the report is designed for the Salisbury hand mounted on a Puma 560 arm, but a similar approach could be used to develop grasping systems for other robots.

Natural Language Input for a Computer Problem Solving System

The STUDENT problem solving system, programmed in LISP, accepts as input a comfortable but restricted subset of English which can express a wide variety of algebra story problems. STUDENT finds the solution to a large class of these problems. STUDENT can utilize a store of global information not specific to any one problem, and may make assumptions about the interpretation of ambiguities in the wording of the problem being solved. If it uses such information or makes any assumptions, STUDENT communicates this fact to the user. The thesis includes a summary of other English language questions-answering systems. All these systems, and STUDENT, are evaluated according to four standard criteria. The linguistic analysis in STUDENT is a first approximation to the analytic portion of a semantic theory of discourse outlined in the thesis. STUDENT finds the set of kernel sentences which are the base of the input discourse, and transforms this sequence of kernel sentences into a set of simultaneous equations which form the semantic base of the STUDENT system. STUDENT then tries to solve this set of equations for the values of requested unknowns. If it is successful it gives the answers in English. If not, STUDENT asks the user for more information, and indicates the nature of the desired information. The STUDENT system is a first step toward natural language communication with computers. Further work on the semantic theory proposed should result in much more sophisticated systems.

Truth Maintenance Systems for Problem Solving

The thesis developed here is that reasoning programs which take care to record the logical justifications for program beliefs can apply several powerful, but simple, domain-independent algorithms to (1) maintain the consistency of program beliefs, (2) realize substantial search efficiencies, and (3) automatically summarize explanations of program beliefs. These algorithms are the recorded justifications to maintain the consistency and well founded basis of the set of beliefs. The set of beliefs can be efficiently updated in an incremental manner when hypotheses are retracted and when new information is discovered. The recorded justifications also enable the pinpointing of exactly whose assumptions which support any particular belief. The ability to pinpoint the underlying assumptions is the basis for an extremely powerful domain-independent backtracking method. This method, called Dependency-Directed Backtracking, offers vastly improved performance over traditional backtracking algorithms.

CO2Y the intelligent green solution: minimising carbon emissions by maximising shared travel opportunity.

It is in the interests of everybody that the environment is protected. In view of the recent leaps in environmental awareness it would seem timely and sensible, therefore, for people to pool vehicle resources to minimise the damaging impact of emissions. However, this is often contrary to how complex social systems behave – local decisions made by self-interested individuals often have emergent effects that are in the interests of nobody. For software engineers a major challenge is to help facilitate individual decision-making such that individual preferences can be met, which, when accumulated, minimise adverse effects at the level of the transport system. We introduce this general problem through a concrete example based on vehicle-sharing. Firstly, we outline the kind of complex transportation problem that is directly addressed by our technology (CO2y™ - pronounced “cosy”), and also show how this differs from other more basic software solutions. The CO2y™ architecture is then briefly introduced. We outline the practical advantages of the advanced, intelligent software technology that is designed to satisfy a number of individual preference criteria and thereby find appropriate matches within a population of vehicle-share users. An example scenario of use is put forward, i.e., minimisation of grey-fleets within a medium-sized company. Here we comment on some of the underlying assumptions of the scenario, and how in a detailed real-world situation such assumptions might differ between different companies, and individual users. Finally, we summarise the paper, and conclude by outlining how the problem of pooled transportation is likely to benefit from the further application of emergent, nature-inspired computing technologies. These technologies allow systems-level behaviour to be optimised with explicit representation of individual actors. With these techniques we hope to make real progress in facing the complexity challenges that transportation problems produce.

The Dirichlet problem in convex bounded domains for operators with L^\infty-coefficients

M.Hieber, I.Wood: The Dirichlet problem in convex bounded domains for operators with L^\infty-coefficients, Diff. Int. Eq., 20, 7 (2007),721-734.

Double Jeopardy Without Parameters: Re-characterization in International Criminal Law

Olusanya, O. (2004). Double Jeopardy Without Parameters: Re-characterization in International Criminal Law. Series Supranational Criminal Law: Capita Selecta, volume 2. Antwerp: Intersentia. RAE2008

James Joyce and the Problem of Psychoanalysis

Thurston, L. (2004). James Joyce and the Problem of Psychoanalysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. RAE2008

Littered with meaning: The problem of sign pollution in postmodern, post-structuralist, and ecocritical thought

Slocombe, W. (2005). Littered with meaning: The problem of sign pollution in postmodern, post-structuralist, and ecocritical thought. Textual Practice. 19 (4), 493-508. RAE2008

Precise solutions of the one-dimensional Monge-Kantorovich problem

Plakhov, A.Y., (2004) 'Precise solutions of the one-dimensional Monge-Kantorovich problem', Sbornik: Mathematics 195(9) pp.1291-1307 RAE2008

Newton's aerodynamic problem in media of chaotically moving particles

Plakhov, A.Y.; Torres, D., (2005) 'Newton's aerodynamic problem in media of chaotically moving particles', Sbornik: Mathematics 196(6) pp.885-933 RAE2008

The Dirichlet problem in convex bounded domains for operators with L8-coefficients

Wood, Ian; Hieber, M., (2007) 'The Dirichlet problem in convex bounded domains for operators with L8-coefficients', Differential and Integral Equations 20 pp.721-734 RAE2008

Project Sanitarium: gaming TB: a serious game for a serious problem

Collaborative projects between Industry and Academia provide excellent opportunities for learning. Throughout the academic year 2014-2015 undergraduates from the School of Arts, Media and Computer Games at Abertay University worked with academics from the Infection Group at the University of St Andrews and industry partners Microsoft and DeltaDNA. The result was a serious game prototype that utilized game design techniques and technology to demystify and educate players about the diagnosis and treatment of one of the world's oldest and deadliest diseases, Tuberculosis (TB). Project Sanitarium is a game incorporating a mathematical model that is based on data from real-world drug trials. This paper discusses the project design and development, demonstrating how the project builds on the successful collaborative pedagogical model developed by academic staff at Abertay University. The aim of the model is to provide undergraduates with workplace simulation, wider industry collaboration and access to academic expertise to solve challenging and complex problems.