The effect of La or Ce on ageing response and mechanical properties of cast Mg-Gd-Zr alloys

Mg-8Gd-0.6Zr-1RE (RE = La or Ce, wt.%) alloys were prepared by casting. The microstructures, age hardening behavior and mechanical properties were investigated. The results show that the addition of 1 wt.% La or Ce to a Mg-8Gd-0.6Zr alloy reduces the dendrite arm spacing and slightly improves the mechanical properties and age hardening response.

影响汉语阅读能力发展的相关认知因素及其作用的发展变化

The present cross-sectional study paid attention to Chinese reading acquisition of 391 children from preschool to grade 3 in two elementary schools, and investigated the relationship between orthographic processing skills, morphological awareness, phonological awareness, naming, phonological memory, visual processing skill and reading skills, after controlling the variance of age, nonverbal intelligence and pinyin knowledge. The main results are as follows: Firstly, there are many different language skills as the predictors of Chinese reading success. Orthographic processing skills, morphological awareness, phonological awareness and naming are important in single-character recognition and comprehension. Beside them, the effect of visual processing skill and phonological memory for comprehension are also significant. Among them, the role of orthographic processing skills is the most important, whatever in single-character recognition or in comprehension. Secondly, orthographic processing skills are the most important factors in reading acquisition at low grade and its effect drops obviously after grade 2. Thirdly, morphological awareness is also the factor that cannot be ignored whatever for single-character recognition or for comprehension. Its influence appears in preschool and becomes the only significant predictor of character recognition in grade 3. Furthermore, morphological awareness is more relevant with the development of comprehension. Fourthly, phonological awareness plays the secondary role in Chinese reading acquisition except in grade 2 when its contribution is most of all. And compare with morphological awareness, the effect of phonological awareness is relative low. Fifthly, naming is important through preschool to grade 2. The contribution of phonological memory increases from preschool to grade 3 in comprehension.

7-12岁儿童执行功能与智力的关系

The nature of individual differences among children is an important issue in the study of human intelligence. There are close relation between intelligence and executive functions. Traditional theories, which are based mainly on the factor analysis, approach the problem only from the perspective of psychometrics. However, they do not study the relation of cognition and neurobiology. Some researchers try to explore the essential differences in intelligence from the basic cognitive level, by studying the relationship between executive function and intelligence. The aim of this study was to do the followings 1) to delineate and separate the executive function in children into measurable constructs; 2) to establish the relationship between executive function and intelligence in children; 3) to find out the difference and its neural mechanism between intellectually-gifted and normal children’s executive function. The participants were 188 children aged 7-12 year old. There were 6 executive function tasks. The results were follows: 1) The latent variables analyses showed that there was no stable construct of executive function in 7-10 year old children. The executive function construct of 11-12 year old children could be separated into updating, inhibition and shifting. And they had grown to be more or less the same as adults in the executive function. There were only moderate correlations between the three types of executive function, but they were largely independent of each other. 2) The correlations between the indices of updating, inhibition, shifting and intelligence were different in 7-12 year old children. The older the age, the more the indices were related to intelligence. The updating and shifting were related to intelligence in 7-10 year old children. There were significant correlations between the updating, inhibition, shifting and intelligence in 11-12 year old children. The correlation between updating and intelligence was higher than the correlation between shifting and intelligence. Furthermore, in structural equation models controlling for the three executive functions correlations, updating was highly related to intelligence, but the relations of inhibition and shifting to intelligence were not significant. 3) Intellectually-gifted children performed better than normal children in executive function tasks. The neural mechanism differences between intellectually gifted and average children were indicated by ERP component P3. The present study helps us to understand the relationship between intelligence and executive function; and throws light on the issue of individual differences in intelligence. The present results can provide theoretical support for the development a culture-free intelligence test and a method to promote the development of intelligence. Our present study lends support to the neural efficient hypothesis.

The Implications of Philosophical Foundations for Knowledge Representation and Learning in Agents

Lacey N and Lee M.H., The Implications of Philosophical Foundations for Knowledge Representation and Learning in Agents, in Proc. AISB?01 Symposium on Adaptive Agents and Multi-agent Systems, York, March 2001, pp13-24.

Procurement of electronic content across the UK National Health Service and Higher Education sectors. Report to JISC executive and LKDN executive.

Spink, S., Urquhart, C., Cox, A. & Higher Education Academy - Information and Computer Sciences Subject Centre. (2007). Procurement of electronic content across the UK National Health Service and Higher Education sectors. Report to JISC executive and LKDN executive. Sponsorship: JISC/LKDN

The Offstage of Democracy: The Problem of Social Dialogue in John Dewey’s and Walter Lippmann’s Writings

The aim of this article is to present and discuss John Dewey’s and Walter Lippmann’s views on the problem of communication in a democratic society, particularly their views on the question of a role of communication in forming social processes. First part of the paper outlines the framework of this problem and its meaning to the question of possibility of democracy. Part two is concerned with anthropological and socio-political considerations: I discuss the Deweyan and the Lippmannian understanding of individual, society, intelligence and democracy. In part three I examine in detail the problem of communication, with special attention given to the questions of the role of communication in forming social processes, the foundations and conditions of communication, the debaters, and a subject matter of a debate as well as the questions of who and what forms this debate and whether we can form it altogether.

Impacto das variáveis sociodemográficas no potencial dos jovens com formação superior em Portugal

Dissertação apresentada à Universidade Fernando Pessoa, como parte dos requisitos para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Psicologia, ramo de Psicologia do Trabalho e das Organizações

Optimisation of Smart Grid performance using centralised and distributed control techniques

A massive change is currently taking place in the manner in which power networks are operated. Traditionally, power networks consisted of large power stations which were controlled from centralised locations. The trend in modern power networks is for generated power to be produced by a diverse array of energy sources which are spread over a large geographical area. As a result, controlling these systems from a centralised controller is impractical. Thus, future power networks will be controlled by a large number of intelligent distributed controllers which must work together to coordinate their actions. The term Smart Grid is the umbrella term used to denote this combination of power systems, artificial intelligence, and communications engineering. This thesis focuses on the application of optimal control techniques to Smart Grids with a focus in particular on iterative distributed MPC. A novel convergence and stability proof for iterative distributed MPC based on the Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers is derived. Distributed and centralised MPC, and an optimised PID controllers' performance are then compared when applied to a highly interconnected, nonlinear, MIMO testbed based on a part of the Nordic power grid. Finally, a novel tuning algorithm is proposed for iterative distributed MPC which simultaneously optimises both the closed loop performance and the communication overhead associated with the desired control.

The formulation, testing and stability of 16% fat cream liqueurs

Cream liqueurs manufactured by a one-step process, where alcohol was added before homogenisation, were more stable than those processed by a two -step process which involved addition of alcohol after homogenisation. Using the one-step process, it was possible to produce creaming-stable liqueurs by using one pass through a homogeniser (27.6 MPa) equipped with "liquid whirl" valves. Test procedures to characterise cream liqueurs and to predict shelf life were studied in detail. A turbidity test proved simple, rapid and sensitive for characterising particle size and homogenisation efficiency. Prediction of age thickening/gelation in cream liqueurs during incubation at 45 °C depended on the age of the sample when incubated. Samples that gelled at 45 °C may not do so at ambient temperature. Commercial cream liqueurs were similar in gross chemical composition, and unlike experimentally produced liqueurs, these did not exhibit either age-gelation at ambient or elevated temperatures. Solutions of commercial sodium caseinates from different sources varied in their calcium sensitivity. When incorporated into cream liqueurs, caseinates influenced the rate of viscosity increase, coalescence and, possibly, gelation during incubated storage. Mild heat and alcohol treatment modified the properties of caseinate used to stabilise non-alcoholic emulsions, while the presence of alcohol in emulsions was important in preventing clustering of globules. The response to added trisodium citrate varied. In many cases, addition of the recommended level (0.18%) did not prevent gelation. Addition of small amounts of NaOH with 0.18 % trisodium citrate before homogenisation was beneficial. The stage at which citrate was added during processing was critical to the degree of viscosity increase (as opposed to gelation) in the product during 45 °C incubation. The component responsible for age-gelation was present in the milk-solids non fat portion of the cream and variations in the creams used were important in the age-gelation phenomenon Results indicated that, in addition to possibly Ca++, the micellar casein portion of serum may play a role in gelation. The role of the low molecular weight surfactants, sodium stearoyl lactylate and monodiglycerides in preventing gelation, was influenced by the presence of trisodium citrate. Clustering of fat globules and age-gelation were inhibited when 0.18 % citrate was included. Inclusion of sodium stearoyl lactylate, but not monodiglycerides, reduced the extent of viscosity increase at 45 °C in citrate containing liqueurs.

Development of a general internet attitude scale and internet self-efficacy scale

The measurement of users’ attitudes towards and confidence with using the Internet is an important yet poorly researched topic. Previous research has encountered issues that serve to obfuscate rather than clarify. Such issues include a lack of distinction between the terms ‘attitude’ and ‘self-efficacy’, the absence of a theoretical framework to measure each concept, and failure to follow well-established techniques for the measurement of both attitude and self-efficacy. Thus, the primary aim of this research was to develop two statistically reliable scales which independently measure attitudes towards the Internet and Internet self-efficacy. This research addressed the outlined issues by applying appropriate theoretical frameworks to each of the constructs under investigation. First, the well-known three component (affect, behaviour, cognition) model of attitudes was applied to previous Internet attitude statements. The scale was distributed to four large samples of participants. Exploratory factor analyses revealed four underlying factors in the scale: Internet Affect, Internet Exhilaration, Social Benefit of the Internet and Internet Detriment. The final scale contains 21 items, demonstrates excellent reliability and achieved excellent model fit in the confirmatory factor analysis. Second, Bandura’s (1997) model of self-efficacy was followed to develop a reliable measure of Internet self-efficacy. Data collected as part of this research suggests that there are ten main activities which individuals can carry out on the Internet. Preliminary analyses suggested that self-efficacy is confounded with previous experience; thus, individuals were invited to indicate how frequently they performed the listed Internet tasks in addition to rating their feelings of self-efficacy for each task. The scale was distributed to a sample of 841 participants. Results from the analyses suggest that the more frequently an individual performs an activity on the Internet, the higher their self-efficacy score for that activity. This suggests that frequency of use ought to be taken into account in individual’s self-efficacy scores to obtain a ‘true’ self-efficacy score for the individual. Thus, a formula was devised to incorporate participants’ previous experience of Internet tasks in their Internet self-efficacy scores. This formula was then used to obtain an overall Internet self-efficacy score for participants. Following the development of both scales, gender and age differences were explored in Internet attitudes and Internet self-efficacy scores. The analyses indicated that there were no gender differences between groups for Internet attitude or Internet self-efficacy scores. However, age group differences were identified for both attitudes and self-efficacy. Individuals aged 25-34 years achieved the highest scores on both the Internet attitude and Internet self-efficacy measures. Internet attitude and self-efficacy scores tended to decrease with age with older participants achieving lower scores on both measures than younger participants. It was also found that the more exposure individuals had to the Internet, the higher their Internet attitude and Internet self-efficacy scores. Examination of the relationship between attitude and self-efficacy found a significantly positive relationship between the two measures suggesting that the two constructs are related. Implication of such findings and directions for future research are outlined in detail in the Discussion section of this thesis.

Towards a situation-awareness-driven design of operational business intelligence & analytics systems

With the swamping and timeliness of data in the organizational context, the decision maker’s choice of an appropriate decision alternative in a given situation is defied. In particular, operational actors are facing the challenge to meet business-critical decisions in a short time and at high frequency. The construct of Situation Awareness (SA) has been established in cognitive psychology as a valid basis for understanding the behavior and decision making of human beings in complex and dynamic systems. SA gives decision makers the possibility to make informed, time-critical decisions and thereby improve the performance of the respective business process. This research paper leverages SA as starting point for a design science project for Operational Business Intelligence and Analytics systems and suggests a first version of design principles.