University of Windsor

About: University of Windsor is a education organization based out in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Argumentation theory. The organization has 10654 authors who have published 22307 publications receiving 435906 citations. The organization is also known as: UWindsor & Assumption University of Windsor.

Sports Participation and Self-Esteem: Variations as a Function of Gender and Gender Role Orientation

Abstract: The purpose of this study was to examine the role of gender, sports participation, and gender orientation in predicting individuals' domain-specific and global self-esteem. A sample of 100 Grade 11 students completed measures of self-perception, body image, gender orientation, and sports participation. The results showed that although boys reported greater satisfaction with weight and appearance, there were no gender differences in general self-worth. In addition, more feminine individuals who participated in competitive sports reported lower levels of perceived athletic competence and global self-worth, but reported higher self-esteem when they participated in more noncompetitive sports. Although sports participation does predict self-esteem, participants' gender orientation and the type of sports in which they participate are moderating factors.

Observation and modelling of HOx radicals in a boreal forest

Abstract: . Measurements of OH and HO2 radicals were conducted in a pine-dominated forest in southern Finland during the HUMPPA-COPEC-2010 (Hyytiala United Measurements of Photochemistry and Particles in Air – Comprehensive Organic Precursor Emission and Concentration study) field campaign in summer 2010. Simultaneous side-by-side measurements of hydroxyl radicals were conducted with two instruments using chemical ionization mass spectrometry (CIMS) and laser-induced fluorescence (LIF), indicating small systematic disagreement, OHLIF / OHCIMS = (1.31 ± 0.14). Subsequently, the LIF instrument was moved to the top of a 20 m tower, just above the canopy, to investigate the radical chemistry at the ecosystem–atmosphere interface. Comprehensive measurements including observations of many volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and the total OH reactivity were conducted and analysed using steady-state calculations as well as an observationally constrained box model. Production rates of OH calculated from measured OH precursors are consistent with those derived from the steady-state assumption and measured total OH loss under conditions of moderate OH reactivity. The primary photolytic sources of OH contribute up to one-third to the total OH production. OH recycling, which occurs mainly by HO2 reacting with NO and O3, dominates the total hydroxyl radical production in this boreal forest. Box model simulations agree with measurements for hydroxyl radicals (OHmod. / OHobs. = 1.00 ± 0.16), while HO2 mixing ratios are significantly under-predicted (HO2mod. / HO2obs. = 0.3 ± 0.2), and simulated OH reactivity does not match the observed OH reactivity. The simultaneous under-prediction of HO2 and OH reactivity in periods in which OH concentrations were simulated realistically suggests that the missing OH reactivity is an unaccounted-for source of HO2. Detailed analysis of the HOx production, loss, and recycling pathways suggests that in periods of high total OH reactivity there are additional recycling processes forming OH directly, not via reaction of HO2 with NO or O3, or unaccounted-for primary HOx sources. Under conditions of moderate observed OH reactivity and high actinic flux, an additional RO2 source of approximately 1 × 106 molec cm−3 s−1 would be required to close the radical budget. Nevertheless, a major fraction of the OH recycling occurs via the reaction of HO2 with NO and O3 in this terpene-dominated environment.

Efficient hardware implementation of the hyperbolic tangent sigmoid function

Abstract: Efficient implementation of the activation function is important in the hardware design of artificial neural networks. Sigmoid, and hyperbolic tangent sigmoid functions are the most widely used activation functions for this purpose. In this paper, we present a simple and efficient architecture for digital hardware implementation of the hyperbolic tangent sigmoid function. The proposed method employs a piecewise linear approximation as a foundation, and further improves the results using a lookup table. Our design proves to be more efficient considering area × delay as a performance metric when compared to similar proposals. VLSI implementation of the proposed design using a 0.18µm CMOS process is also presented, which shows a 35% improvement over similar recently published architectures.