Tracking the mind during reading: The influence of past, present, and future words on fixation durations.

Reading requires the orchestration of visual, attentional, language-related, and oculomotor processing constraints. This study replicates previous effects of frequency, predictability, and length of fixated words on fixation durations in natural reading and demonstrates new effects of these variables related to 144 sentences. Such evidence for distributed processing of words across fixation durations challenges psycholinguistic immediacy-of-processing and eye-mind assumptions. Most of the time the mind processes several words in parallel at different perceptual and cognitive levels. Eye movements can help to unravel these processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An automotive engine oil viscosity sensor

For the evaluation of the condition of automotive engine oil, the oil's viscosity is one of the most important parameters. Using microacoustic viscosity sensors, an oil-viscosity measurement can be performed on-board. In this contribution, we discuss the behavior of the viscosity of engine oil, its temperature dependence, and the resulting representation in terms of output signals of microacoustic viscosity sensors. These considerations are illustrated by means of measurement results obtained for used oil samples, which have been obtained from test cars and fresh oil samples out of different viscosity classes. Finally, the detection of the viscosity increase due to soot contamination is demonstrated.     

Alcohol in Munich secondary school students--a study for dissemination of experiences, knowledge, attitude and behavior

The Munich Community Health Service (Medical School-Service Department) conducted an alcohol prevention project in ten public secondary schools. The 423 pupils (11-17 years of age) filled in a questionnaire on alcohol and discussed it afterwards under the guidance of a school physician and a teacher using guideline information. The results of the survey are presented in this paper. Additionally, suggestions for transferring the results to conceptualize and carry out preventive measures are made. The results indicate that the first experience with alcohol occurred early in life. One-fifth of the sample had already tried alcohol at the age of six. Immediate effects of alcohol (e.g. state of drunkenness) were experienced by 35.7 percent of the sample group. Kiosks, shops, and beverage stores were named most frequently as sources for alcohol. The sources of social support varied with respect to sex and age. With increasing age of the children, parents were contacted less frequently whereas the role of peers increased. The present results supply possible paths of action for the development of successful prevention strategies, e.g. by pointing out the early age of onset as well as specific sources of alcohol acquisition.     

Proton exchange membranes by radiation grafting of styrene onto fep films. III. Structural investigation

Structural investigation on proton-exchange membranes, obtained by the radiation grafting of styrene onto FEP films and subsequent sulfonation, was carried out by differential scanning calorimetry. The membrane crystallinity was found to show a decreasing trend with increasing degree of grafting. The melting temperature of all the membranes also showed a slight decrease as compared to the ungrafted FEP. The results have been explained in terms of the cumulative effect of the decrease in the crystalline/amorphous ratio by the incorporation of amorphous polystyrene grafts and of disruption of spherulitic crystallites of the FEP component in the membranes. The glass transition temperature of the membranes with different water contents was also evaluated. A correlation of the glass transition temperature with the residual water in dried membranes was established. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Three-Dimensional Solution and Experimental Confirmation for the Electric Resistivity Testing of Surface-Breaking Defects in Green-State Powder Metallurgy Compacts

This paper investigates electrostatic voltage distributions around a surface-breaking flaw due to an injected current of known strength. The direct 3-D solution of the voltage behavior over the flawed surface is obtained numerically by the use of a boundary integral formulation. A novel iteration method is applied to solve the resulting electrostatic integral equation for the unknown surface voltage distribution. In addition to investigating the sensitivity of different flaw sizes to the observed surface voltage distribution, important issues such as suitable probe spacing and current flow orientation are studied. For sufficiently small surface-breaking flaws, a simple image source model is developed to evaluate the voltage response of hairline cracks. The model is tested by comparing it with the developed numerical solution. Experiments aimed at establishing the validity of the modeling approach show remarkable agreement with the theoretical model.     

Photolytic crosslinking of poly(p-hydroxystyrene)

Light-induced crosslinking of poly(p-hydroxystyrene) (PPHS) is significantly enhanced by O₂. This was evidenced by molar mass (light scattering measurements) and by gel content determinations which were performed on various polymer samples before and after continuous irradiation at λ_inc = 254 nm. The following mechanism was elucidated with the aid of flash photolysis studies: Crosslinking in the absence or presence of O₂ is mainly due to the combination of phenoxyl type radicals. In the absence of O₂ the latter are exclusively formed by O? H bond cleavage of singlet excited phenolic groups. Triplet excited phenolic groups which are also formed do not deactivate via O? H bond cleavage but react very effectively with O₂. This reaction leads to the formation of HO and additional phenoxyl type radicals. All Commercial and most laboratory-prepared PPHS samples contain chemically bound impurities of quinoid nature. On the basis of results performed with model compounds of low molar mass, it is concluded that triplet excited quinoid groups react effectively with phenolic groups forming phenoxyl type radicals and that they are quite unreactive with respect to the abstraction of alphatic hydrogen atoms. Irradiation of PPHS at λ_inc = 254 nm causes the formation of quinoid groups which absorb strongly at this wavelength. Light absorption by these groups becomes a determining factor with respect to photochemical alteration in the course of further irradiation.     

Reward revision and the average reward markov decision process

Summary We integrate two numerical procedures for solving the average reward Markov decision process (MDP), standard successive approximations and modified policy iteration with reward revision. Reward revision is the process of revising the reward structure of a second, more computationally desirable MDP so as to produce, in the limit, an optimality equation having a fixed point identical to that associated with the original MDP. A numerical study indicates that for MDP's having a non-sparse transition structure with a small number of relatively large entries per row, the addition of reward revision can have significant computational benefits.

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Zusammenfassung Zur Lösung Markovscher Entscheidungsprozesse (MDP) mit Durchschnitts-Kriterium werden zwei numerische Verfahren, nämlich sukzessive Approximation und modifizierte Politik-Iteration, mit einer Transformation, der sogenannten 'Reward-Revision, kombiniert. Bei dieser Transformation werden die Übergangswahrscheinlichkeiten so abgeändert (ausgedünnt), daß das neue Modell sich numerisch günstiger verhält. Dazu müssen die einstufigen Erträge so revidiert werden, daß die Optimalitäts-Gleichung des neuen Modells im Limes mit der des ursprünglichen übereinstimmt. Numerische Untersuchungen zeigen, daß für MDP mit stark besetzten Übergangsmatrizen, bei denen nur an wenigen Stellen je Zeile große Werte stehen, die Anwendung von 'Reward Revision zu wesentlichen Einsparungen an Rechenaufwand führen kann.

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Research supported by NSF Grant ECS-8319355     

Exploring single electrode reactions in polymer electrolyte fuel cells

Utilising a pseudo-reference electrode in polymer electrolyte fuel cells allows for the separation of anodic and cathodic contributions to the entire cell impedance. Modelling the impedance responses by using equivalent circuits inhibits the investigation of kinetic parameters of the basic electrochemical reactions, which take place at single electrode-electrolyte interfaces. Therefore, we evaluate single electrode impedance measurements by a kinetic model, which is based on specific reaction pathways, either for the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) or the hydrogen oxidation reaction (HOR). As a consequence, it is possible to obtain kinetic parameters for the specific reaction of interest. Furthermore, the information gained from the single electrode impedance measurements and the kinetic model can give insight into single reactions steps. In particular, the ORR has to include a chemical step in the reaction pathway.