生活始于黄金时间

黄金时间是每晚6点到10点这段时间,在这段时间里公众大多在看电视。黄金时间的商业广告费用最高,每分钟高达上百万美元。当你在黄金时间里不再盯着别人通过专业技能大把赚钱,而是开始行动,去实现自己的梦想和目标,那么你在成功的道路上就会取得长足的进步。     

How do business model and health technology design influence each other? Insights from a longitudinal case study of three academic spin-offs

Academic spin-offs often lack business expertise, face uncertainties regarding their innovation and their markets, and do not have a clear idea of how their product will create value. In spite of this vagueness, academic entrepreneurs must articulate a business model and rapidly establish trustworthy relationships with potential users, purchasers and capital investors. One may thus wonder how their technology development process is influenced by the long-term expectations of their putative customers as well as the short-term requirements of capital investors? This longitudinal case study examines how the business models of three Canadian health technology spin-offs sought to address the value expectations of clinical users and capital investors, how tensions were resolved, and the impact this had on technology design. We describe the synergistic readjustments, drastic reconfiguration and mismatch between business model and technology design we observed. Our discussion highlights the mediating mechanisms by which business models and technology design influence each other, clarifying why the initial value proposition of the spin-offs was either refined or reframed. Beyond confirming the importance of differentiating business models in the health technology industry, our study suggests that it is not only who makes decision that matters, but also how stakeholders’ value expectations get embedded in a spin-off's value proposition.     

Benefits of sign language interpreting and text alternatives for deaf students' classroom learning

Four experiments examined the utility of real-time text in supporting deaf students' learning from lectures in postsecondary (Experiments 1 and 2) and secondary classrooms (Experiments 3 and 4). Experiment 1 compared the effects on learning of sign language interpreting, real-time text (C-Print), and both. Real-time text alone led to significantly higher performance by deaf students than the other two conditions, but performance by deaf students in all conditions was significantly below that of hearing peers who saw lectures without any support services. Experiment 2 compared interpreting and two forms of real-time text, C-Print and Communication Access Real-Time Translation, at immediate testing and after a 1-week delay (with study notes). No significant differences among support services were obtained at either testing. Experiment 3 also failed to reveal significant effects at immediate or delayed testing in a comparison of real-time text, direct (signed) instruction, and both. Experiment 4 found no significant differences between interpreting and interpreting plus real-time text on the learning of either new words or the content of television programs. Alternative accounts of the observed pattern of results are considered, but it is concluded that neither sign language interpreting nor real-time text have any inherent, generalized advantage over the other in supporting deaf students in secondary or postsecondary settings. Providing deaf students with both services simultaneously does not appear to provide any generalized benefit, at least for the kinds of materials utilized here.     

Effect of supramaximal exercise training on metabolic outcomes in obese adults

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of 6 weeks of supramaximal exercise training (SET) on performance variables and metabolic changes in sedentary obese adults.

Twenty-four obese adults were randomly allocated into a non-trained (NT) [n = 12; body mass index (BMI) = 33(3)] and SET group [n = 12; BMI = (33(2)]. After baseline metabolic and fitness measurements, the participants completed a 6-week SET intervention. Metabolic, anthropometric, and fitness assessments were repeated post-intervention.

For SET, fasting glucose (4.64(0.15) vs. 4.32(0.22) mmol · l^–1; P < 0.01), insulin (23.2(4.6) vs. 13.8(3.3) µmol · ml^–1; P < 0.01), homoeostasis model assessment-insulin resistance index (4.78(1.2) vs. 2.65(1.5); P < 0.01) and systolic blood pressure (127(3) vs. 120(3) mmHg; P < 0.01) were significantly lower 24-h post-intervention than at baseline and for the NT group, and these changes remained significant at 72-h and 2-weeks post-intervention (P < 0.01, respectively). Interestingly, nonesterified fatty acids (0.62(0.09) vs. 0.71(0.11) mmol · l^–1; P < 0.01) and resting fat oxidation rate (57(11) vs. 63(4)%; P < 0.01) increased significantly from baseline 24-h post-intervention in the SET group and from baseline at 72-h (P < 0.01, respectively) and 2-weeks post-intervention (P < 0.01, respectively). Six weeks of SET improved a number of metabolic and vascular risk factors in obese, sedentary adults, highlighting the potential of SET to provide an alternative exercise model for the improvement of metabolic health in this population.     

Infants' Selective Attention to Reliable Visual Cues in the Presence of Salient Distractors

With many features competing for attention in their visual environment, infants must learn to deploy attention toward informative cues while ignoring distractions. Three eye tracking experiments were conducted to investigate whether 6‐ and 8‐month‐olds (total N = 102) would shift attention away from a distractor stimulus to learn a cue–reward relation. While 8‐month‐olds showed evidence of increasingly selective attention toward the predictive cues, even when the distractors were highly salient, 6‐month‐olds shifted attention toward the predictive cues only when the distractors were equally (not more) engaging. These experiments suggest that attention in infancy is highly dependent on the relative weightings of predictiveness and visual salience, which may differ across development and context.     

TRANSFRONTIER REGIONAL UNIVERSITY COOPERATION (TRUC)

Academic mobility is up and running in the European Community. Beyond its borders, there are sign3 that non‐EC countries also do not want to be left out of what seems to be an important development. Hand on the heels of the Joint Study Programmes (1976‐1986), ERASMUS and COMETT have been launched albeit with limited budgets. Will their resources be sufficient to meet growing demand? What are the prospects for non‐Community countries that want to participate?.

This article assumes that the momentum for mobility will be greater than the resources available or predicted to meet it and that complementary strategies will have to be sought for and found if a great wave of enthusiasm for cooperation across borders is not to be frustrated. It describes the Council of Europe's recent initiatives in promoting transfrontier regional university cooperation, in various forms, and sees in them possible models for developing exchanges between regions on a modest flexible ad‐hoc basis.     

Trajectory tracking for a quadrotor under wind perturbations: sliding mode control with state-dependent gains

The problem of position tracking of a mini drone subject to wind perturbations is investigated. The solution is based on a detailed unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) model, with aerodynamic coefficients and external disturbance components, which is introduced in order to better represent the impact of the wind field. Then, upper bounds of wind-induced disturbances are characterized, which allow a sliding mode control (SMC) technique to be applied with guaranteed convergence properties. The peculiarity of the considered case is that the disturbance upper bounds depend on the control amplitude itself (i.e. the system is nonlinear in control), which leads to a new procedure for the control tuning presented in the paper. The last part of the paper is dedicated to the analysis and reduction of chattering effects, as well as investigation of rotor dynamics issues. Conventional SMC with constant gains, proposed first order SMC, and proposed quasi-continuous SMC are compared. Nonlinear UAV simulator, validated through in-door experiments, is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed controls.     

Flexible and context-dependent categorization by eighteen-month-olds

One hundred 18-month-olds were tested using sequential touching and following 4 different priming contexts using sets of toys that could be simultaneously categorized at either the basic or global level. An exact expression of the expected mean sequence length for arbitrary categories was derived as a function of the number of touches made, and a finite mixture model analytic method was also used to explore individual variability in categorization. Toddlers could categorize flexibly and spontaneously selected the level of categorization as a function of the prior prime. Perceptual Variability emerged as a predictor of the level at which infants subsequently categorized. The infants were also able to classify objects as members of both basic- and global-level categories simultaneously.