Liquids treated with cold plasma emerged as ‘redox drugs’ in biomedicine, sources of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species targeting cellular functions, including wound healing cancer progression. The use cell culture media starting liquid, however, challenges the identification plasma-generated chemistry, limited by presence many organic compounds. Available detection methods need, therefore, t...

Background The field of infertility medicine has witnessed a surge of scientific developments in recent years, but research on public attitudes towards infertility treatments has remained minimal. This study examined the social and demographic factors that affect women’s attitudes towards assisted reproductive technology (ART) in general, as well as their opinions of specific issues related to ...

Acknowledgements I would like to thank my wife, Jennifer Flenner for her patients and support. I would also like to thank my thesis adviser, Brian DeFacio for his guidance in this project. A. Lazzarini was kind enough to allow the use of the Caltech data for this investigation. Conversations with B. Mashhoom and S. Kopeikin about general relativity were invaluable.

Communication is a central aspect of human learning. Using the Probability Inquiry Environment (PIE) as an example, we examine how external representations (both textual and iconic) mediate face-to-face conversations among students, and support productive mathematical discourse. We provide quantitative data that suggests that seventh grade students who used PIE learned some of the basic princip...

In this article, we propose a structure of threaded learning conversations taking place in virtual learning communities. This new structure aims at facilitating the emergence of learning conversations in these learning communities. These threaded conversations take place in a forum-type tool that uses a tree data structure composed of threads to organize group communication. We identify two sit...

Traditionally conversational interfaces, such as chatbots, have been created in two distinct ways. Either by using natural language parsing methods or by creating conversational trees that utilise the natural Zipf curve distribution of conversations using a tool like AIML. This work describes a hybrid method where conversational trees are developed for specific types of conversations, and then ...

substituted schiff bases (hydrazones) 5a-j have been prepared from the starting material 2-chloro pyridine-3-carboxylic acid 1 by a sequence of reactions like reaction with 2-amino-6-nitro benzothiazole (ullamann condensation), thionyl chloride, hydrazine hydrate and different aromatic aldehydes. on cyclocondensation of 5a-j with thioglycolic acid in dry 1,4-dioxane furnished desired compounds ...

Before industry can adopt Multi-Agent System (MAS) critical issues like safety and security must be solved. The first part of this paper introduces an implementation architecture that serves as a framework to discuss the various aspects of MAS safety, and to classify the many heterogeneous approaches in this field. In the second part of the paper we present our own approach to increase MAS safe...

We report on a pilot experiment that investigated the effects of different eye gaze behaviours of a cartoon-like talking face on the quality of human-agent dialogues. We compared a version of the talking face that roughly implements some patterns of human-like behaviour with two other versions. In one of the other versions the shifts in gaze were kept minimal and in the other version the shifts...