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Impact of study partner status and group membership on commitment device effectiveness among college students

Gupta et al. | Jun 03, 2022

Impact of study partner status and group membership on commitment device effectiveness among college students

Here seeking to identify a possible solution to procrastination among college students, the authors used an online experiment that involved the random assignment of study partners that they shared their study time goal with. These partners were classified by status and group membership. The authors found that status and group membership did not significantly affect the likelihood of college students achieving their committed goals, and also suggest the potential of soft commitment devices that take advantage of social relationships to reduce procrastination.

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Open Source RNN designed for text generation is capable of composing music similar to Baroque composers

Goel et al. | May 05, 2021

Open Source RNN designed for text generation is capable of composing music similar to Baroque composers

Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are useful for text generation since they can generate outputs in the context of previous ones. Baroque music and language are similar, as every word or note exists in context with others, and they both follow strict rules. The authors hypothesized that if we represent music in a text format, an RNN designed to generate language could train on it and create music structurally similar to Bach’s. They found that the music generated by our RNN shared a similar structure with Bach’s music in the input dataset, while Bachbot’s outputs are significantly different from this experiment’s outputs and thus are less similar to Bach’s repertoire compared to our algorithm.

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The Feasibility of Mixed Reality Gaming as a Tool for Physical Therapy Following a Spinal Cord Injury

DeBre et al. | Apr 04, 2018

The Feasibility of Mixed Reality Gaming as a Tool for Physical Therapy Following a Spinal Cord Injury

Physical therapy, especially for patients with spinal cord injuries, can be a difficult and tedious experience. This can result in negative health outcomes, such as patients dropping out of physical therapy or developing additional health problems. In this study, the authors develop and test a potential solution to these challenges: a mixed reality game called Skyfarer that replaces a standard physical therapy regimen with an immersive experience that can be shared with their friends and family. The findings of this study suggest that mixed reality games such as Skyfarer could be effective alternatives to conventional physical therapy.

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pH-dependent drug interactions with acid reducing agents

Lin et al. | Nov 12, 2024

pH-dependent drug interactions with acid reducing agents
Image credit: The authors

Some cancer treatments lose efficacy when combined with treatments for excessive stomach acid, due to the changes in the stomach environment caused by the stomach acid treatments. Lin and Lin investigate information on oral cancer drugs to see what information is available on interactions of these drugs.

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Qualitative tracking of human and animation motions reveals differences in their walking gaits

Baily et al. | Oct 04, 2024

Qualitative tracking of human and animation motions reveals differences in their walking gaits

In their attempt to evoke a greater emotional connection with viewers, animators have strived to replicate human movements in their animations. However, animation movements still appear distinct from human movements. With a focus on walking, we hypothesized that animations, unaffected by real external forces (e.g. gravity), would move with a universally distinct, gliding gait that is discernible from humans.

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A HOG feature extraction and CNN approach to Parkinson’s spiral drawing diagnosis

Tripathi et al. | Aug 09, 2024

A HOG feature extraction and CNN approach to Parkinson’s spiral drawing diagnosis

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a prevalent neurodegenerative disorder in the U.S., second only to Alzheimer’s disease. Current diagnostic methods are often inefficient and dependent on clinical exams. This study explored using machine and deep learning to enhance PD diagnosis by analyzing spiral drawings affected by hand tremors, a common PD symptom.

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