University of Massachusetts Boston

About: University of Massachusetts Boston is a education organization based out in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Health care. The organization has 6541 authors who have published 12918 publications receiving 411731 citations. The organization is also known as: UMass Boston.

The Mechanisms Underlying the ASD Advantage in Visual Search

Abstract: A number of studies have demonstrated that individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are faster or more successful than typically developing control participants at various visual-attentional tasks (for reviews, see Dakin and Frith in Neuron 48:497–507, 2005; Simmons et al in Vis Res 49:2705–2739, 2009) This “ASD advantage” was first identified in the domain of visual search by Plaisted et al (J Child Psychol Psychiatry 39:777–783, 1998) Here we survey the findings of visual search studies from the past 15 years that contrasted the performance of individuals with and without ASD Although there are some minor caveats, the overall consensus is that—across development and a broad range of symptom severity—individuals with ASD reliably outperform controls on visual search The etiology of the ASD advantage has not been formally specified, but has been commonly attributed to ‘enhanced perceptual discrimination’, a superior ability to visually discriminate between targets and distractors in such tasks (eg O’Riordan in Cognition 77:81–96, 2000) As well, there is considerable evidence for impairments of the attentional network in ASD (for a review, see Keehn et al in J Child Psychol Psychiatry 37:164–183, 2013) We discuss some recent results from our laboratory that support an attentional, rather than perceptual explanation for the ASD advantage in visual search We speculate that this new conceptualization may offer a better understanding of some of the behavioral symptoms associated with ASD, such as over-focusing and restricted interests

Object/relational mapping 2008: hibernate and the entity data model (edm)

Abstract: Object/Relational Mapping (ORM) provides a methodology and mechanism for object-oriented systems to hold their long-term data safely in a database, with transactional control over it, yet have it expressed when needed in program objects. Instead of bundles of special code for this, ORM encourages models and use of constraints for the application, which then runs in a context set up by the ORM. Today's web applications are particularly well-suited to this approach, as they are necessarily multithreaded and thus are prone to race conditions unless the interaction with the database is very carefully implemented. The ORM approach was first realized in Hibernate, an open source project for Java systems started in 2002, and this year is joined by Microsoft's Entity Data Model for .NET systems. Both are described here.

A model of top-down attentional control during visual search in complex scenes.

Abstract: Recently, there has been great interest among vision researchers in developing computational models that predict thedistribution of saccadic endpoints in naturalistic scenes. In many of these studies, subjects are instructed to view sceneswithout any particular task in mind so that stimulus-driven (bottom-up) processes guide visual attention. However, wheneverthere is a search task, goal-driven (top-down) processes tend to dominate guidance, as indicated by attention beingsystematically biased toward image features that resemble those of the search target. In the present study, we devise atop-down model of visual attention during search in complex scenes based on similarity between the target and regions ofthe search scene. Similarity is defined for several feature dimensions such as orientation or spatial frequency using ahistogram-matching technique. The amount of attentional guidance across visual feature dimensions is predicted by apreviously introduced informativeness measure. We use eye-movement data gathered from participants’ search of a set ofnaturalistic scenes to evaluate the model. The model is found to predict the distribution of saccadic endpoints in searchdisplays nearly as accurately as do other observers’ eye-movement data in the same displays.Keywords: visual search, visual attention, top-down attentional control, real-world scenes, informativeness, eye tracking,eye movements, saccadic selectivity, scene perceptionCitation: Hwang, A. D., Higgins, E. C., & Pomplun, M. (2009). A model of top-down attentional control during visual search incomplex scenes. Journal of Vision, 9(5):25, 1–18, http://journalofvision.org/9/5/25/, doi:10.1167/9.5.25.

Housing and Community Development

Abstract: Researchers in housing and community develop, design, and evaluate policies to improve access to attractive, affordable, and sustainable housing and to support the social, physical, and economic infrastructure of communities. Practitioners in this field confront political considerations, administrative guidelines, and limited funding. Operations research and management science can increase the efficiency and effectiveness of policy responses to issues such as affordable housing, residential segregation, and inequalities in economic and social opportunities. This research spans systems modeling, urban economics, multicriteria decision modeling, stochastic models, and decision support systems and is often interdisciplinary and applied in nature. A common thread in this work is the need to explicitly address the needs of multiple stakeholders, to capture the public and private nature of housing, and to incorporate best-available evidence regarding markets, policies, and impacts of housing and community development. In this article, we describe the policy context for decision modeling in housing and community development, review previous research through the lens of descriptive, prescriptive, and decision support analysis, and identify important limitations to this research. We then describe diverse opportunities to address current policy concerns such as sustainable development, post-disaster reconstruction, and individual and group decision support. Keywords: affordable housing; community development; decision models; sustainable development; urban affairs

Effectiveness of an educational intervention on complementary feeding practices and growth in rural China: a cluster randomised controlled trial.

Abstract: Objective Inappropriate complementary feeding is one of the major causes of malnutrition in young children in developing countries. We developed an educational intervention, delivered by local health-care providers, aimed at improving complementary feeding practices and child nutrition. Design Eight townships in Laishui, a rural area in China, were randomly assigned to the educational intervention or control group. A total of 599 healthy infants were enrolled at age 2-4 months and followed up until 1 year of age. In the intervention group, educational messages and enhanced home-prepared recipes were disseminated to caregivers through group trainings and home visits. Questionnaire surveys and anthropometric measurements were taken at baseline and ages 6, 9 and 12 months. Analysis was by intention to treat. Results It was found that food diversity, meal frequency and hygiene practices were improved in the intervention group. Infants in the intervention group gained 0.22 kg more weight (95 % CI 0.003, 0.45 kg, P = 0.047) and gained 0.66 cm more length (95 % CI 0.03, 1.29 cm, P = 0.04) than did controls over the study period. Conclusions Findings from the study suggest that an educational intervention delivered through local health-care providers can lead to substantial behavioural changes of caregivers and improve infant growth.