This experimental study investigated how text difficulty and different working memory capacity(WMC)affected Chinese EFL learners’reading comprehension and their tendency to engage in task-unrelated thoughts,that is,m...This experimental study investigated how text difficulty and different working memory capacity(WMC)affected Chinese EFL learners’reading comprehension and their tendency to engage in task-unrelated thoughts,that is,mind wandering(MW),in the course of reading.Sixty first-year university non-English majors participated in the study.A two-factor mixed experimental design of 2(text difficulty:difficult and simple)×2(WMC:high/large and low/small)was employed.Results revealed that 1)the main and interaction effects of WMC and text difficulty on voluntary MW were significant,whereas those on involuntary MW were not;2)while reading the easy texts,the involuntary MW of high-WMC individuals was less frequent than that of low-WMC ones,whereas while reading the difficult ones,the direct relationship between WMC and involuntary MW was not found;and that 3)high-WMC individuals had a lower overall rate of MW and better reading performance than low-WMC individuals did,but with increasing text difficulty,their rates of overall MW and voluntary MW were getting higher and higher,and the reading performance was getting lower and lower.These results lend support to WM theory and have pedagogical implications for the instruction of L2 reading.展开更多
Pedpheral neuropathy, and specifically distal peripheral neuropathy （DPN）, is one of the most frequent and troublesome complications of diabetes mellitus. It is the major mason for morbidity and mortality among diab...Pedpheral neuropathy, and specifically distal peripheral neuropathy （DPN）, is one of the most frequent and troublesome complications of diabetes mellitus. It is the major mason for morbidity and mortality among diabetic patients. It is also frequently associated with debilitating pain. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the natural history and pathogenesis of this disease remains limited. For a long time hyperglycemia was viewed as a major, if not the sole factor, responsible for all symptomatic presentations of DPN. Multiple clinical observations and animal studies supported this view. The control of blood glucose as an obligatory step of therapy to delay or reverse DPN is no longer an arguable issue. However, while supporting evidence for the glycemic hypothesis has accumulated, multiple controversies accumulated as well. It is obvious now that DPN cannot be fully understood without considering factors besides hyperglycemia. Some symptoms of DPN may develop with little, if any, correlation with the glycemic status of a patient. It is also dear that identification of these putative non-glycemic mechanisms of DPN is of utmost importance for our understanding of failures with existing treatments and for the development of new approaches for diagnosis and therapy of DPN. In this work we will review the strengths and weaknesses of the glycemic hypothesis, focusing on dinical and animal data and on the pathogenesis of early stages and triggers of DPN other than hyperglycemia.展开更多
Due to the mobility of mobile hosts,checkpoints and message logs of the computing process may disperseover different mobile support stations in the checkpointing and rollback recovery protocol for mobilecomputing.Thre...Due to the mobility of mobile hosts,checkpoints and message logs of the computing process may disperseover different mobile support stations in the checkpointing and rollback recovery protocol for mobilecomputing.Three existing checkpoint handoff schemes do not give well consideration to the efficiency offailure-free process execution and the recovery speed of the failure process at the same time.A dynamicadaptive handoff management of the checkpointing and rollback recovery protocol for mobile computing isproposed in this paper.According to the individual feature and current state of each mobile host,differentimplementations are selected dynamically to complete the handoff process upon the handoff event.Performance analyses show that the proposed handoff management incurs a low loss of performance duringfailure-free and achieves a quick recovery upon the process fault.展开更多
In this paper, the platoon control problem of autonomous vehicles in highway is studied. Since the autonomous vehicles have the characteristics of nonlinearities, external disturbances and strong coupling, a novel ada...In this paper, the platoon control problem of autonomous vehicles in highway is studied. Since the autonomous vehicles have the characteristics of nonlinearities, external disturbances and strong coupling, a novel adaptive fuzzy sliding coordinated control system is constructed to supervise the longitudinal and lateral motions of autonomous vehicles, in which the fuzzy system is employed to approximate the unknown nonlinear functions. Due to the low sensitivity to disturbances and plant parameter variations, the proposed control approach is an efficient way to handle with the complex dynamic plants operating under un-certainty conditions. The asymptotic stability of adaptive coordinated platoon close-loop control system is verified based on the Lyapunov stability theory. The results indicate that the presented adaptive coordinated platoon control approach can accurately achieve the tracking performance and ensures the stability and riding comfort of autonomous vehicles in a platoon. Finally,simulation test is exploited to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.展开更多
This paper addresses the problem of synchronized path following of multiple homogenous underaetuated autonomous underwater vehicles （AUVs）. The dedicated control laws are categorized into two envelopes： One is stee...This paper addresses the problem of synchronized path following of multiple homogenous underaetuated autonomous underwater vehicles （AUVs）. The dedicated control laws are categorized into two envelopes： One is steering individual underwater vehicle to track along predefined path, and the other is ensuring tracked paths of multiple vehicles to be synchronized, by means of decentralized speed adaption under the constraints of multi-vehicle communication topology. With these two tasks formulation, geometric path following is built on Lyapunov theory and baekstepping techniques, while injecting helmsman behavior into classic individual path following control. Synchronization of path parameters are reached by using a mixture of tools from linear algebra, graph theory and nonlinear control theory. A simple but effective control design on direct inter-vehicle speed adaption with minimized communication variables, enables the multi-AUV systems to be synchronized and stabilized into an invariant manifold, and all speeds converge to desired assignments as a byproduct. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the synchronized path following control laws proposed.展开更多
文摘This experimental study investigated how text difficulty and different working memory capacity(WMC)affected Chinese EFL learners’reading comprehension and their tendency to engage in task-unrelated thoughts,that is,mind wandering(MW),in the course of reading.Sixty first-year university non-English majors participated in the study.A two-factor mixed experimental design of 2(text difficulty:difficult and simple)×2(WMC:high/large and low/small)was employed.Results revealed that 1)the main and interaction effects of WMC and text difficulty on voluntary MW were significant,whereas those on involuntary MW were not;2)while reading the easy texts,the involuntary MW of high-WMC individuals was less frequent than that of low-WMC ones,whereas while reading the difficult ones,the direct relationship between WMC and involuntary MW was not found;and that 3)high-WMC individuals had a lower overall rate of MW and better reading performance than low-WMC individuals did,but with increasing text difficulty,their rates of overall MW and voluntary MW were getting higher and higher,and the reading performance was getting lower and lower.These results lend support to WM theory and have pedagogical implications for the instruction of L2 reading.
基金Supported by NIH National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, No. DK067248
文摘Pedpheral neuropathy, and specifically distal peripheral neuropathy （DPN）, is one of the most frequent and troublesome complications of diabetes mellitus. It is the major mason for morbidity and mortality among diabetic patients. It is also frequently associated with debilitating pain. Unfortunately, our knowledge of the natural history and pathogenesis of this disease remains limited. For a long time hyperglycemia was viewed as a major, if not the sole factor, responsible for all symptomatic presentations of DPN. Multiple clinical observations and animal studies supported this view. The control of blood glucose as an obligatory step of therapy to delay or reverse DPN is no longer an arguable issue. However, while supporting evidence for the glycemic hypothesis has accumulated, multiple controversies accumulated as well. It is obvious now that DPN cannot be fully understood without considering factors besides hyperglycemia. Some symptoms of DPN may develop with little, if any, correlation with the glycemic status of a patient. It is also dear that identification of these putative non-glycemic mechanisms of DPN is of utmost importance for our understanding of failures with existing treatments and for the development of new approaches for diagnosis and therapy of DPN. In this work we will review the strengths and weaknesses of the glycemic hypothesis, focusing on dinical and animal data and on the pathogenesis of early stages and triggers of DPN other than hyperglycemia.
基金Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 60873138)Postdoctoral Scientific Research Foundation of Heilongjiang (No. LBH-008124)the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. HEUCFT1007)
文摘Due to the mobility of mobile hosts,checkpoints and message logs of the computing process may disperseover different mobile support stations in the checkpointing and rollback recovery protocol for mobilecomputing.Three existing checkpoint handoff schemes do not give well consideration to the efficiency offailure-free process execution and the recovery speed of the failure process at the same time.A dynamicadaptive handoff management of the checkpointing and rollback recovery protocol for mobile computing isproposed in this paper.According to the individual feature and current state of each mobile host,differentimplementations are selected dynamically to complete the handoff process upon the handoff event.Performance analyses show that the proposed handoff management incurs a low loss of performance duringfailure-free and achieves a quick recovery upon the process fault.
基金supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.61304193&U1564208)National Key R&D Program of China(Grant No.2016YFB0100900)
文摘In this paper, the platoon control problem of autonomous vehicles in highway is studied. Since the autonomous vehicles have the characteristics of nonlinearities, external disturbances and strong coupling, a novel adaptive fuzzy sliding coordinated control system is constructed to supervise the longitudinal and lateral motions of autonomous vehicles, in which the fuzzy system is employed to approximate the unknown nonlinear functions. Due to the low sensitivity to disturbances and plant parameter variations, the proposed control approach is an efficient way to handle with the complex dynamic plants operating under un-certainty conditions. The asymptotic stability of adaptive coordinated platoon close-loop control system is verified based on the Lyapunov stability theory. The results indicate that the presented adaptive coordinated platoon control approach can accurately achieve the tracking performance and ensures the stability and riding comfort of autonomous vehicles in a platoon. Finally,simulation test is exploited to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control approach.
基金supported by the EU FP6 FreeSubNet project under Grant No.036186the National Science Foundation of China under Grant No.51079061+1 种基金the Key Laboratory of Education Ministry for Image Processing and Intelligent Control,Huazhong University of Science and Technology under Grant No. 200804supported by the European Marie Curie Fellowship
文摘This paper addresses the problem of synchronized path following of multiple homogenous underaetuated autonomous underwater vehicles （AUVs）. The dedicated control laws are categorized into two envelopes： One is steering individual underwater vehicle to track along predefined path, and the other is ensuring tracked paths of multiple vehicles to be synchronized, by means of decentralized speed adaption under the constraints of multi-vehicle communication topology. With these two tasks formulation, geometric path following is built on Lyapunov theory and baekstepping techniques, while injecting helmsman behavior into classic individual path following control. Synchronization of path parameters are reached by using a mixture of tools from linear algebra, graph theory and nonlinear control theory. A simple but effective control design on direct inter-vehicle speed adaption with minimized communication variables, enables the multi-AUV systems to be synchronized and stabilized into an invariant manifold, and all speeds converge to desired assignments as a byproduct. Simulation results illustrate the performance of the synchronized path following control laws proposed.
