Most rule-based systems are imperative, or, if they are mainly declarative, also provide some imperative features. It is argued that a strictly declarative formalism with a sound logical basis is

Social media has been postulated as a convenient online resource tool for learning. To understand the usefulness of social media, the present study focused on “Guitar Class of Uncle Ma”, one of YouTube's most popular guitar learning channels in Taiwan, as a self-directed learning tool. Drawing upon a cognitive-affective theory of learning with media (CATLM), learners have the ability to control...

Although the general characteristics of DNAPL flow and transport in the subsurface are reasonably well understood, it is often difficult and expensive to pinpoint sources of DNAPL contamination. Inversion techniques to improve site characterization rely on a forward model of multiphase flow. Ideally the forward model would be very fast, so that many realizations can be carried out in order to q...

We develop a forward model for uterine electromyogram (EMG) and magnetomyogram (MMG) contractions. Our model aims to describe the electrophysiological aspects of uterine contractions during pregnancy at both the cellular and organ levels. In particular, we apply a bidomain approach for modeling the propagation of the myometrium transmembrane potential on the uterus and use it to compute the act...

This paper presents a novel synthesis and analysis of a flexible elephant trunk robot (biological continuum–style manipulator). The robot includes eight flexible segments, although it can be extended to more segments as necessary. In this study the gravity of the springs is neglected due to the fact that the manipulation force is much larger than these gravity forces. This mechanism exhibits a ...

User modeling components should include suitable mechanisms for acquiring user models, in addition to representation and management mechanisms. The methods developed to date can be divided into two groups: Those that extract primary assumptions about the user from his/her system input; and those that extract secondary (or derivative) assumptions from primary and other secondary assumptions. Sec...

This paper proposes an approach to speed up seismic forward modeling when the Green’s function of a given model is structured in the sense that the Green’s function has a sparse representation in some known transform domain. The first step of our approach runs a forward finite-difference (FD) simulation for a duration longer than each conventional run, but with all sources activated simultaneou...

Acoustic confusions degrade the accuracy of pronunciation assessment severely in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) systems. This paper presents our recent study on optimal modeling of the acoustic confusions. We change the traditional mandarin syllable structure, which is composed of initial and final, to a novel phoneme structure. Several phoneme splitting strategies are investigated,...

Despite the extensive media coverage associated with the diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), our fundamental understanding of the disease pathophysiology remains in its infancy. Only recently have scientific laboratories and personnel begun to explore CTE pathophysiology through the use of preclinical models of neurotrauma. Some studies have shown the ability to recapitulate so...

Delays in sensorimotor loops have led to the proposal that reaching movements are primarily under pre-programmed control and that sensory feedback loops exert an influence only at the very end of a trajectory. The present review challenges this view. Although behavioral data suggest that a motor plan is assembled prior to the onset of movement, more recent studies have indicated that this initi...