Research to date suggests that textual enhancement may positively affect the learning of multiword combinations known as collocations, but may impair recall of unenhanced text. However, the attentional mechanisms underlying such effects remain unclear. In this study, 38 undergraduate students were divided into two groups: one read a text containing typographically enhanced collocations (ET group) and the other read the same text with unenhanced collocations (the baseline text, or BT group). While reading, participants' eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracker. Results showed that the ET group spent significantly longer time processing target collocations, and performed better than the BT group in a post-reading collocation test. However, apart from the enhanced collocations, the ET group recalled significantly less unenhanced text than the BT group. Further investigation of eye fixation data showed that the ET group spent substantially longer time processing collocations which, according to a pretest, they were not familiar with than did the BT group, whereas the two groups did not differ significantly in their processing of familiar collocations. Collectively, the results suggest that the trade-off between collocation learning and recall of unenhanced text is due to additional cognitive resources being allocated to enhanced collocations that are new to the reader.

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According to a meta-analysis of empirical studies, seductive details such as emotionally interesting text segments and attention-grabbing pictures have significant negative effects on the reader's recall, reading comprehension, and learning of important textual information. This study investigates the negative effects of seductive details on recall of main ideas and reading comprehension by using an eye-tracking technique. In the experiment, a total of 56 undergraduate students read a block of expository text with seductive details, and the spatial and temporal distribution of attention was measured by gaze duration and recorded by an eye tracker. Then recall and reading comprehension tests were employed. Two multiple regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relationship between attention allocation and reading performance. The results indicate that increased attention to seductive sentences, not to seductive pictures, was a major determinant of poor performance in terms of both recall and reading comprehension, suggesting that increased attentional allocation to seductive sentences may hinder information retrieval and produce a less coherent mental representation of given text.

Self-controlled feedback on a variety of tasks are well established as effective means of facilitating motor skill learning. This study assessed the effects of self-controlled feedback on the performance of a serial motor skill. The task was to learn the sequence of 18 movements that make up the Taekwondo Poomsae Taegeuk first, which is the first beginner's practice form learned in this martial art. Twenty-four novice female participants (M age=27.2 yr., SD=1.8) were divided into two groups. All participants performed 16 trials in 4 blocks of the acquisition phase and 20 hr. later, 8 trials in 2 blocks of the retention phase. The self-controlled feedback group had significantly higher performance compared to the yoked-feedback group with regard to acquisition and retention. The results of this study may contribute to the literature regarding feedback by extending the usefulness of self-controlled feedback for learning a serial skill.

Abstract:The construction industry is a representative industry that consumes large amounts of energy and produces substantial pollution. The operation of a building accounts for a large portion of its total CO 2 emissions. Most efforts are focused on improving the energy efficiency related to the operation of a building. The relative importance of the energy and CO 2 emissions from the construction materials increases with the increasing number of low-energy buildings. To minimize the life-cycle energy use of a building, the energy consumed from both materials in the construction phase as well as the energy consumed from the operation of the building must be reduced. In this study, an optimal design method for composite columns in high-rise buildings using a genetic algorithm is proposed to reduce cost and CO 2 emissions from the structural materials in the construction phase. The proposed optimal method minimizes the total cost, including the additional cost calculated based on CO 2 emissions from composite columns, while satisfying the structural design criteria and constructability conditions. The proposed optimal method is applied to an actual 35-story building, and the effective use of structural materials for the sustainable design of composite columns is investigated. It is shown that using more concrete than OPEN ACCESSEnergies 2013, 6 5610 steel section and using high-strength materials are economically and environmentally effective methods.

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There are now six recognized neuropeptide Y (NPY) receptor subtypes (Y1-Y4 and two recently cloned distinct receptors labeled Y5), of which Y1 and one of the Y5's have been suggested could mediate the effect of NPY on feeding. The fragments NPY(2-36) and NPY(3-36), which bind Y1 only poorly, were injected intracerebroventricularly (icv) and found to have similar dose-response relationships to NPY in the stimulation of feeding. However NPY (13-36), which stimulates both Y2 and Y5, caused no increase in food intake, even at high doses. Maximal stimulation with the classical Y1 agonist [Pro34]-NPY produced only 50% of the maximum effect of NPY itself despite fully inhibiting adenylyl cyclase activity in vitro in a Y1 system. The novel fragment [Pro34]-NPY(3-36) is as effective at stimulating food intake as the classical Y1 analogue [Pro34]-NPY but bound to the Y1 receptor with only 1/20th of the affinity of NPY and failed to inhibit adenylyl cyclase through this receptor. [Pro34]-NPY(3-36) is therefore a relatively appetite-selective ligand. Coadministration of high dose NPY(13-36) and [Pro34]NPY did not enhance feeding compared with [Pro34]-NPY alone. In addition, the NPY Y1 receptor antagonist BIBP-3226, which does not bind Y2, Y4, or Y5 receptors, significantly reduced NPY induced feeding. These results indicate that the feeding effect of icv NPY involves a novel receptor and that it is functionally distinct from the recognized receptor subtypes.

This paper proposes a wireless inclinometer sensor node for structural health monitoring (SHM) that can be applied to civil engineering and building structures subjected to various loadings. The inclinometer used in this study employs a method for calculating the tilt based on the difference between the static acceleration and the acceleration due to gravity, using a micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS)-based accelerometer. A wireless sensor node was developed through which tilt measurement data are wirelessly transmitted to a monitoring server. This node consists of a slave node that uses a short-distance wireless communication system (RF 2.4 GHz) and a master node that uses a long-distance telecommunication system (code division multiple access—CDMA). The communication distance limitation, which is recognized as an important issue in wireless monitoring systems, has been resolved via these two wireless communication components. The reliability of the proposed wireless inclinometer sensor node was verified experimentally by comparing the values measured by the inclinometer and subsequently transferred to the monitoring server via wired and wireless transfer methods to permit a performance evaluation of the wireless communication sensor nodes. The experimental results indicated that the two systems (wired and wireless transfer systems) yielded almost identical values at a tilt angle greater than 1°, and a uniform difference was observed at a tilt angle less than 0.42° (approximately 0.0032° corresponding to 0.76% of the tilt angle, 0.42°) regardless of the tilt size. This result was deemed to be within the allowable range of measurement error in SHM. Thus, the wireless transfer system proposed in this study was experimentally verified for practical application in a structural health monitoring system.