The purpose of this study was to develop a model to predict water extraction patterns and therefore salt distribution patterns in a one dimensional homogeneous soil profile for a specified root distribution . Water extraction was simulated as a function of the total potential and the root density at any level of the profile. Salt redistribution caused by irrigation was simulated by assuming a partial and proportional displacement of the water in each soil layer. A computer program was written for the model in Fortran language and implemented on the Vax. To evaluate the performance of the model, test studies were carried out in the laboratory using two lysimeters and wheat as a crop. A neutron probe and the four-probe electrode method were used to follow the change in the soil moisture and the salinity in the profile during the growing season. Comparisons were made between the measured and simulated values of water content and salinity. Application of the model results and recommendations for further research were suggested to improve the performance of the model.

One method for improving the appeal of instruction is found in Christopher Alexander’s work on architectural design patterns. In this qualitative research study, student comments on teacher/course evaluation forms were analyzed to generate six instructional design patterns. The teacher enthusiasm pattern encourages teachers to show (a) increased scholarship and enthusiasm towards the subject matter, (b) genuine concern and enthusiasm towards the students, and (c) mastery of and enthusiasm towards the act of teaching. The balanced curriculum pattern recommends that teachers (a) determine the appropriate depth or breadth of subject matter and communicate it to the students, (b) create a balanced schedule of activities, assignments, and tests, and (c) provide a variety of subject matter topics, instructional strategies, and media delivery technologies. The clear and appropriate assessments pattern directs teachers to (a) communicate the learning objectives related to each assessment, (b) ensure assessment methods are appropriate measures of the objectives, and (c) use fair criteria in grading and administering the assessments. The authentic connections pattern asks teachers to (a) help students understand the connections between the subject matter content and the world of work, (b) promote interpersonal connections between students through instruction and group work, as well as facilitate teacher-student connections by dealing with students honestly and fairly, and (c) encourage students to look at connections that go beyond workplace application and help students become better people. The flow of time pattern recommends that teachers (a) help students plan out their schedules for various time periods, and (b) synchronize the flow of instructional events with the flow of events occurring in the students’ personal lives. Finally, the negotiation and cooperation pattern encourages teachers to apply the processes of negotiation and cooperation to solve problems related to (a) the students’ lack of a sense of freedom, power, or control, (b) the conflict within the students or within the social order of the class, and (c) the general absence of a self-supporting, self-maintaining, and generating quality in the instruction. These six instructional design patterns may be used by teachers to increase the appeal of instruction in higher education settings.

Many mobile games use a user interface designed to get their players to spend more time, money or social engagement within their application. This is done by deliberately misleading or otherwise confusing the user by, for example, making the player lose track of time when playing or by giving rewards to players who spend money or invite their friends into the game. This can be taken to the extent that it strongly affects players negatively both financially and socially. This type of game elements is also known as dark patterns, which are not only used in games but also on websites, social media and other digital applications. Dark patterns have been discussed more in recent years since consumers and users have become more aware of how deceptive digital design affects behavior. This study examines the game design of Candy Crush Saga with a focus on dark patterns, and how these affect the game as a whole as well as the users who play it. The study focuses on three categories that characterize dark patterns, namely temporal, monetary and social. Based on these categories, they have subcategories that describe specific design elements with examples. The study that has been done consists of two parts: a heuristic evaluation and a survey where a number of active players have been asked to answer questions about their gaming habits in the game Candy Crush Saga. The study finds that the game contains several dark patterns, which in varying degrees affects the players’ experience in the game. The study also discusses how cumulative dark patterns enhance each other and can therefore be perceived as particularly problematic. / Många mobilspel använder sig av ett användargränssnitt utformat för att få sina spelare att spendera mer tid, pengar eller socialt engagemang inom deras applikation. Detta genom att medvetet vilseleda eller på annat sätt förvirra användaren genom att till exempel få spelaren att förlora uppfattningen av hur mycket tid de har spenderat i spelet eller genom att ge belöningar till spelare som spenderar pengar eller bjuder in sina vänner i spelet. Detta kan tas till den grad att det starkt påverkar spelarna negativt både ekonomiskt och socialt. Denna typ av spelelement kallas även dark patterns, som förutom i spel även används på webbsidor, sociala medier och andra digitala applikationer. Dark patterns har diskuterats mer under senare år då konsumenter och användare har blivit mer medvetna om hur vilseledande digital design påverkar beteenden. I denna studie har spelet Candy Crush Sagas speldesign undersökts med fokus på dark patterns, och hur dessa påverkar spelet i sin helhet och användarna som spelar. Studien har fokuserat på de tre kategorier som kännetecknar dark patterns, nämligen de temporala, monetära och sociala. Utifrån dessa kategorier har de underkategorier som beskriver specifika designelement med exempel. Studien som har gjorts består av två delar där det dels är en heuristisk utvärdering som har gjorts, samt en enkätstudie där en andel aktiva spelare har fått svara på frågor angående deras spelvanor i spelet Candy Crush Saga. Studien konstaterar att spelet innehåller flera dark patterns, som i varierande grad påverkar spelarnas upplevelse i spelet. Studien diskuterar även hur kumulativa dark patterns förhöjer varandra och därav kan upplevas som särskilt problematiska.

<p>Diet and physical activity (PA) are independent risk factors for obesity and chronic diseases including type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and metabolic syndrome (MetS). The temporal sequence of these exposures could be used to create patterns with potential links to health status indicators.</p> <p>The objectives were (1) to create clusters of joint temporal dietary and PA patterns (TDPAPs) and to determine their association with health status indicators including body mass index (BMI), waist circumference (WC), fasting plasma glucose, glycated hemoglobin, triglycerides, high density lipoprotein cholesterol, total cholesterol, blood pressure, and disease status including obesity, T2DM, and MetS; (2) compare the number and strength of association between clusters of daily temporal dietary patterns (TDPs), temporal PA patterns (TPAPs), and TDPAPs and health status indicators above; (3) determine the association between TDPs on weekday and weekend days and health indicators (diet quality, waist circumference, BMI, and obesity) and their overlap of membership; (4) assess concurrent validity of energy and time cut-offs describing the data-driven TDPs by determining their relationships to BMI and WC.</p> <p>A 24-h dietary recall and random day of accelerometer data of U.S. adults aged 20-65 years from the cross-sectional National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2018 data were used to create data-driven TDPAP, TDP, TPAP clusters by constrained or modified dynamic time warping, coupled with a kernel k-means clustering algorithm. Multivariate regression models determined associations between the temporal pattern clusters and health status indicators, controlling for potential confounders and adjusting for multiple comparisons. The number of significant differences among clusters and adjusted R2/the Akaike information criterion compared the strength of associations between clusters of patterns and continuous/categorical health status indicators. The percentages of overlap in cluster membership between temporal patterns were also calculated.</p> <p>A TDPAP/TDP cluster with proportionally equivalent energy consumed at evenly spaced eating occasions, or a TDPAP/TPAP cluster with the highest PA counts among 4 clusters, </p> <p>was associated with significantly better health indicators including lower BMI, WC, and</p> <p>odds of obesity than other temporal lifestyle pattern clusters. TDPAPs and TDPs had stronger and more numerous associations with health indicators compared with TPAPs. Both a weekday and weekend day TDP of proportionally equivalent energy consumed throughout the day were significantly associated with better health indicators compared with the other TDP clusters but the TDPs of most adults were not consistent on weekdays and weekend days. The data-driven TDP was validated using descriptive cut-off generated TDP and holds promise for obesity interventions and translation to dietary guidance. </p> <p>Temporal lifestyle patterns are significantly associated with health indicators, providing evidence that incorporating time with lifestyle style behaviors comprehensively may provide insight into health. Further evaluation of temporal patterns linked to health holds potential for application to interventions to prevent chronic disease.</p>

Strategies for software development often slight security-related considerations, due to the difficulty of developing realizable requirements, identifying and applying appropriate techniques, and teaching secure design. This work describes a three-part strategy for addressing these concerns. Part 1 provides detailed questions, derived from a two-level characterization of system security based on work by Chung et. al., to elicit precise requirements. Part 2 uses a novel framework for relating this characterization to previously published strategies, or patterns, for secure software development. Included case studies suggest the framework's effectiveness, involving the application of three patterns for secure design (Limited View, Role-Based Access Control, Secure State Machine) to a production system for document management. Part 3 presents teaching modules to introduce patterns into lower-division computer science courses. Five modules, integer over ow, input validation, HTTPS, les access, and SQL injection, are proposed for conveying an aware of security patterns and their value in software development.

Tapered slot antennas (TSAs) have seen considerable application in the millimeter-wave portion of the spectrum. Desirable characteristics of TSAs include symmetric E- and H-plane antenna patterns, and broad non-resonant bandwidths. We investigate extension of TSA operation toward higher frequencies in the thermal infrared (IR), using a metal-oxide-metal diode as the detector. Several different infrared TSA design forms are fabricated using electronbeam lithography and specially developed thin-film processes. The angular antenna patterns of TSA-coupled diodes are measured at 10.6 micrometer wavelength in both E- and H-planes, and are compared to results of finite-element electromagnetic modeling using Ansoft HFSS. Parameter studies are carried out, correlating the geometric and material properties of several TSA design forms to numerical-model results and to measurements. A significant increase in antenna gain is noted for a dielectric-overcoat design. The traveling-wave behavior of the IR TSA structure is investigated using scattering near-field microscopy. The measured near-field data is compared to HFSS results. Suggestions for future research are included

The forefoot (FF) running pattern has been recently advocated to improve running economy and prevent overuse injuries compared to the rearfoot (RF) pattern. However, these claims have not been supported by empirical evidence. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate the potential advantages of RF and FF patterns to improve running economy and reduce injury risk in 20 natural RF and 20 natural FF runners. The first study found that the RF group was more economical when performing the RF pattern at a slow, medium, and fast speed vs. FF running. Only running at the fast speed resulted in a difference in economy between footfall patterns in the FF group in which RF running was more economical. Therefore, there is no advantage of FF running for improving running economy. The results of the second study indicated that there was a weak to moderate relationship between Achilles tendon (AT) moment arm length and running with either RF or FF patterns. AT force was greater during FF running, which may increase the risk of developing tendon injury. The third study used a modeling approach to find that FF running resulted in greater elastic energy recoil in the gastrocnemius (GA) and the soleus (SO). However, greater mechanical work overall with FF running resulted in no difference in metabolic cost of the GA between footfall patterns but greater metabolic cost of the SO compared to RF running. The fourth study found that shock attenuation was greater during RF running compared to FF running. Greater shock attenuation during RF running was a result of an increased load imposed on the system. Decomposing the vertical ground reaction force in the frequency domain revealed that RF running may have a greater reliance on passive shock attenuation mechanism whereas the FF pattern may have a greater reliance on active shock attenuation mechanisms. These results suggest that previous speculation that the FF running pattern is more economical was not substantiated. It is likely that each footfall pattern exposes a runner to different types of injuries, rather than one footfall pattern being more injurious than another.

Software security is an important aspect of ensuring software quality. The goal of this study is to help developers evaluate software security at the early stage of development using traceable patterns and software metrics. The concept of traceable patterns is similar to design patterns, but they can be automatically recognized and extracted from source code. If these patterns can better predict vulnerable code compared to the traditional software metrics, they can be used in developing a vulnerability prediction model to classify code as vulnerable or not. By analyzing and comparing the performance of traceable patterns with metrics, we propose a vulnerability prediction model. Objective: This study explores the performance of code patterns in vulnerability prediction and compares them with traditional software metrics. We have used the findings to build an effective vulnerability prediction model. Method: We designed and conducted experiments on the security vulnerabilities reported for Apache Tomcat (Releases 6, 7 and 8), Apache CXF and three stand-alone Java web applications of Stanford Securibench. We used machine learning and statistical techniques for predicting vulnerabilities of the systems using traceable patterns and metrics as features. Result: We found that patterns have a lower false negative rate and higher recall in detecting vulnerable code than the traditional software metrics. We also found a set of patterns and metrics that shows higher recall in vulnerability prediction. Conclusion: Based on the results of the experiments, we proposed a prediction model using patterns and metrics to better predict vulnerable code with higher recall rate. We evaluated the model for the systems under study. We also evaluated their performance in the cross-dataset validation.

No description available.

Wind power is seen as one of the most effective means available to combat the twin crises of global climate change and energy security. The annual market growth has established wind power as the leading renewable energy technology. Due to the availability of sparsely populated and flat open terrain, the Yucatán Peninsula located in eastern México is a promising region from the perspective of wind energy development but no comprehensive assessment of wind resource has been previously published. A basic requirement when developing wind power projects is to study the main characteristic parameters of wind in relation to its geographical and temporal distribution. The analysis of diurnal and seasonal wind patterns are an important stage in the move towards commercial exploitation of wind power. The research developed during the PhD has comprehensively assessed the wind behaviour over the Yucatán Peninsula region covering long term patterns at three sites, a spatial study using short term data for nine sites, a vertical profile study on one inland site and an offshore study made on a pier at 6.65km from the North shore. Monthly trends, directional behaviours and frequency distributions were identified and discussed. The characteristics of the wind speed variation reflected their proximity to the coast and whether they were influenced by wind coming predominantly from over the land or predominantly from over the sea. The atmospheric stability over the eastern seas was also analysed to assess thermal effects for different wind directions. Diurnal wind speed variations are shown to be affected in particular by the differing wind conditions associated with fetches over two distinct offshore regions. Seasonal behaviour suggests some departure from the oscillations expected from temperature variation. The offshore wind is thermally driven suggesting largely unstable conditions and the potential development of a shallow Stable Internal Boundary Layer.