A Crowd-Powered Task Generation Method for Study of Struggling Search

Evaluation of interactive search systems and study of users’ struggling search behaviors require a significant number of search tasks. However, generation of such tasks is inherently difficult, as each task is supposed to trigger struggling search behavior rather than simple search behavior. To the best of our knowledge, there has not been a commonly used task set for research in struggling search. Moreover, the everchanging landscape of information needs would render old task sets less ideal if not unusable for evaluation. To deal with this problem, we propose a crowd-powered task generation method and develop a platform to efficiently generate struggling search tasks on basis of online wikis such as Wikipedia. Our experiments and analysis show that the generated tasks are qualified to emulate struggling search behaviors consisting of “repeated similar queries” and “quick-back clicks”; tasks of diverse topics, high quality and difficulty can be created using this method. For benefit of the community, we publicly released a task generation platform TaskGenie, a task set of 80 topically diverse struggling search tasks with “baselines,” and the corresponding anonymized user behavior logs.

No-go trials in task switching: effects on the task-set and task-space level

A common marker for inhibition processes in task switching are n − 2 repetition costs. The present study aimed at elucidating effects of no-go trials on n − 2 repetition costs. In contrast to the previous studies, no-go trials were associated with only one of the three tasks in the present two experiments. High n − 2 repetition costs occurred if the no-go task had to be executed in trial n − 2, irrespective of whether a response had to be withheld or not. In contrast, no n − 2 repetition costs were visible if the other two tasks were relevant in n − 2. Whereas this n − 2 effect was unaffected by whether participants could reliably exclude a no-go trial or not, effects of no-gos in trial n were determined by this knowledge. The results differ from effects of no-go trials that are not bound to a specific task. It is assumed that the present no-go variation exerted its effect not on the response level, but on the level of task sets, resulting in enhanced salience of the no-go task that leads to higher activation and, as a consequence, to stronger inhibition. The dissociation of the effects on no-gos in trials n − 2 and n as a function of foreknowledge suggests that the balance between activation and inhibition is shifted not only for single trials and tasks, but for the whole task space.

Dynamic frequency scheduling for CubeSat's on-board and data handling subsystem

<p>CubeSat is a small-sized satellite that provides a cheaper option for the manufacturer to have a fully operational satellite. Due to its size, CubeSat can only generate limited power, and this will restrict its functionality. This research aims to improve CubeSat’s power consumption by implementing the dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) technique to on-board and data handling subsystem (OBDH). DVFS will find the best operating frequency to execute all of OBDH’s task. This paper explains how we determined the task set, representing all routine tasks performed by OBDH during normal operation mode. We have simulated the task set using two DVFS algorithms, static earliest deadline first (EDF) and cycle conserving edf (CC EDF). The result shows that both scheduling algorithms give a similar result to our task set. However, when the scheduler is configured as non-preemptive, the simulator failed to schedule the critical task. It means that the system fails to work as intended. Therefore, we conclude that we need to implement mixed-criticality scheduling to prevent critical tasks from being aborted by the system.</p>

Upgrading the Image of the Russian Armed Forces: A Task Set for Military-Political Training

The demographic trends and general general scepticism among the youth towards the armed forces have created a strong impetus for the authorities to make military service more attractive to young Russian men. This chapter will provide an overview of the newly organized military-political training among the conscripts and military personnel.

Learning of across- and within-task contingencies modulates partial-repetition costs in dual-tasking

Dual-task costs might result from confusions on the task-set level as both tasks are not represented as distinct task-sets, but rather being integrated into a single task-set. This suggests that events in the two tasks are stored and retrieved together as an integrated memory episode. In a series of three experiments, we tested for such integrated task processing and whether it can be modulated by regularities between the stimuli of the two tasks (across-task contingencies) or by sequential regularities within one of the tasks (within-task contingencies). Building on the experimental approach of feature binding in action control, we tested whether the participants in a dual-tasking experiment will show partial-repetition costs: they should be slower when only the stimulus in one of the two tasks is repeated from Trial n − 1 to Trial n than when the stimuli in both tasks repeat. In all three experiments, the participants processed a visual-manual and an auditory-vocal tone-discrimination task which were always presented concurrently. In Experiment 1, we show that retrieval of Trial n − 1 episodes is stable across practice if the stimulus material is drawn randomly. Across-task contingencies (Experiment 2) and sequential regularities within a task (Experiment 3) can compete with n − 1-based retrieval leading to a reduction of partial-repetition costs with practice. Overall the results suggest that participants do not separate the processing of the two tasks, yet, within-task contingencies might reduce integrated task processing.