This paper describes the development of an experimental platform which analyzes and controls the vibration of a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuated and piezo sensed flexible beam. The vibration is controlled using the interactive force of a pair of almost identical SMA wires connected in an antagonistic manner, arranged in parallel to and on both sides of the cantilever beam structure. Data acqui...

This research showed that appropriate input and suitable contexts for interaction among students can lead to successful  second language acquisition (SLA). This study based on Swain's (2005) notion of collaborative dialogue, aimed to study whether EFL learners participating in negotiation of meaning based tasks collaborate with each other and, if so, to investigate the role of this behavior in ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE As the use of 3D rotational angiography (3D RA) for the evaluation of cerebral vasculature becomes more widespread, it is important to evaluate this imaging method's effect on patient radiation dose. The purpose of the study is to measure 3D RA radiation dose as compared with biplanar digital subtraction angiography (DSA). METHODS The distribution and peak skin dose wer...

Food acquisition mode in lizards (i.e., ambush vs. widely searching) has been intensely scrutinized for the past decade to identify correlations between food acquisition mode, diet, sprint speed, and other aspects of phenotypic diversity. To begin to understand these correlations, we studied foraging mode variation in natural foraging behavior and attack speed in three ambush predators and two ...

Vocabulary is an important component of language proficiency which provides the basis for learners’ performance in other skills. But, since vocabulary learning seems to be so demanding, learners tend to forget newly-learnt words quite soon. In order to identify vocabulary learning conditions which can produce a more lasting effect, this study investigated the effect of three kinds of gloss cond...

This paper studies the entry decision of a multinational enterprise into a foreign market. Two alternative entry modes for a foreign direct investment are considered: Greenfield investment versus acquisition. In contrast to existing approaches, the acquisition price and the profits under both entry modes are endogenously determined. Interestingly, we find that the optimal entry mode decision is...

AIMS This study investigates the impact of cine acquisition mode on the dosimetric characteristics of a Varian aS500 amorphous silicon electronic portal imaging device (a-Si EPID). MATERIALS AND METHODS The performance of an a-Si EPID operated in cine mode was assessed and compared to its performance when operated in an integrated mode and dose measurements using an ionization chamber. This s...

Typically, fluctuation correlation spectroscopy ~FCS! data acquisition cards measure the number of photon events per time interval ~i.e., bin!—time mode. Commercial FCS cards combine the bins through hardware in order to calculate the autocorrelation function. Such a design therefore does not yield the time resolved photon sequence, but only the autocorrelation of that sequence. A different acq...

We present experimental results of an approach to learning ontological concepts from text. The ontologicalsemantic analyzer OntoSem and its knowledge resources – in particular, its NLP-oriented ontology and semantic lexicon – are used to dynamically create the feature values on which our learning approach is based. We expand upon our previously reported work, with emphasis given to development ...