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To date, clinical trials have failed to find an effective therapy for victims of traumatic brain injury (TBI) who live with motor, cognitive, and psychiatric complaints. Pre-clinical investigators are now encouraged to include male and female subjects in all translational research, which is of particular interest in the field of neurotrauma given that circulating female hormones (progesterone and estrogen) have been demonstrated to exert neuroprotective effects. To determine whether behavior of male and female C57BL6/J mice is differentially impaired by TBI, male and cycling female mice were injured by controlled cortical impact and tested for several weeks with functional assessments commonly employed in pre-clinical research. We found that cognitive and motor impairments post-TBI, as measured by the Morris water maze (MWM) and rotarod, respectively, were largely equivalent in male and female animals. However, spatial working memory, assessed by the y-maze, was poorer in female mice. Female mice were generally more active, as evidenced by greater distance traveled in the first exposure to the open field, greater distance in the y-maze, and faster swimming speeds in the MWM. Statistical analysis showed that variability in all behavioral data was no greater in cycling female mice than it was in male mice. These data all suggest that with careful selection of tests, procedures, and measurements, both sexes can be included in translational TBI research without concern for effect of hormones on functional impairments or behavioral variability.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) in childhood is associated with neurocognitive deficits. Affected children show worse performance on tests of intelligence than their unaffected siblings and skew toward the lower end of the normal range. Here we further assessed this association in 340 pediatric patients (ages 6–21) with mild–moderate CKD in the Chronic Kidney Disease in Childhood cohort from 48 pediatric centers in North America. Participants underwent a battery of age-appropriate tests including Conners’ Continuous Performance Test-II (CPT-II), Delis–Kaplan Executive Function System Tower task, and the Digit Span Backward task from the age-appropriate Wechsler Intelligence Scale. Test performance was compared across the range of estimated glomerular filtration rate and duration of CKD with relevant covariates including maternal education, household income, IQ, blood pressure, and preterm birth. Among the 340 patients, 35% had poor performance (below the mean by 1.5 or more standard deviations) on at least one test of executive function. By univariate nonparametric comparison and multiple logistic regression, longer duration of CKD was associated with increased odds ratio for poor performance on the CPT-II Errors of Commission, a test of attention regulation and inhibitory control. Thus, in a population with mild-to-moderate CKD, the duration of disease rather than estimated glomerular filtration rate was associated with impaired attention regulation and inhibitory control.

This article discusses the development of task-based performance tests designed to measure digital skills among children aged between 12 and 17 years old. The tasks reflect authentic everyday situations to evaluate skill levels. The primary objective is to design performance tests that provide a comprehensive understanding of children's digital skills. The tests cover three distinct skill dimensions: (a) information navigation and processing; (b) communication and interaction; and (c) content creation and production. These include several subdimensions, offering a detailed perspective on children's digital skills. The development process itself revealed several methodological challenges that needed to be addressed, yielding valuable lessons for future applications. Key lessons from our cross-national experiences include the importance of involving children early in the design process, using a combination of open-ended and closed tasks, and allocating ample time to walk through the coding scheme.

The article proposes a new model for defining and implementing performance tests used in the process of designing and operating IT systems. By defining the objectives, types, topological patterns, and methods of implementation, a coherent description of the test preparation and execution is achieved, facilitating the interpretation of results and enabling straightforward replication of test scenarios. The model was used to develop and implement performance tests in a laboratory environment and in a production system. The proposed division of the testing process into layers correlated with the test preparation steps allows to separate quasi-independent areas, which can be handled by isolated teams of engineers. Such an approach allows to accelerate the process of implementation of performance tests and may affect the optimization of the cost of their implementation.

We administered both maximum-performance and typical-performance assessments of cultural intelligence to 114 undergraduates in a selective university in the Northeast of the United States. We found that cultural intelligence could be measured by both maximum-performance and typical-performance tests of cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence as assessed by a maximum-performance measure is largely distinct from the construct as assessed by a typical-performance measure. The maximum-performance test, the Sternberg Test of Cultural Intelligence (SCIT), showed high internal consistency and inter-rater reliability. Sections with problems from two content domains—Business (SCIT-B) and Leisure (SCIT-L) activities—were highly intercorrelated, suggesting they measured largely the same construct. The SCIT showed substantial correlations with another maximum-performance measure of cultural intelligence, Views-on-Culture. It also was correlated, at more modest levels, with fluid intelligence and personal intelligence tests. Factorially, the (a) maximum-performance cultural intelligence tests, (b) typical-performance cultural intelligence test and a test of openness to experience, and (c) fluid intelligence tests formed three separate factors.

The corrosion of the rotating axis pins of the short suspender will lead to the rotating restriction of its end, which will lead to the corrosion of the parallel wires and affect the performance of the short suspender. In this study, the technical condition of the rotating restricted short suspender unfixed from the suspension bridge was carefully detected. An axial tensile performance test was carried out on these short suspenders, and the subsequent availability of the rotating restricted suspender was evaluated based on the size of the fracture gap. The rotationally limited working conditions of these short suspenders were skillfully simulated by the specially designed tooling, and the fatigue performance test of the rotating restricted short suspender was carried out. A simplified simulation method was proposed based on the random traffic theory. By introducing traffic data obtained from the WIM system, the stress response of the short suspenders caused by vehicles on each lane was simulated, and the simulation results were converted by the rain flow counting method. The residual life of the rotating restricted short suspender was predicted by the comparison between the fatigue test results and the fitting curve of the simulation results. From this study, several of the following conclusions can be summarized: The measured fracture gap size is negatively correlated with the effective area of the suspender, and the gap size of 8mm is a key value. When the fatigue load cycle reaches 345,000 times, the suspender is already in a dangerous state. Additionally, the fractured gap size is considered as the judgment basis for the usability of rotating restricted short suspenders. When the gap size is less than 8 mm, the suspender can be continually used after maintenance and should be updated after 6 years. Otherwise, the suspender needs to be replaced immediately.

Lithium-ion batteries are electrochemical energy storage devices that have enabled the electrification of transportation systems and large-scale grid energy storage. During their operational life cycle, batteries inevitably undergo aging, resulting in a gradual decline in their performance. In this paper, we equip readers with the tools to compute system-level performance metrics across the lifespan of a battery cell. These metrics are extracted from standardized reference performance tests, also known as diagnostic tests, conducted periodically during battery aging experiments. We analyze the diagnostic tests from a publicly available dataset (Pozzato et al. in Data Brief 41:107995, 2022 ) that consists of the capacity test, high pulse power characterization test, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. We provide detailed calculation methodologies and MATLAB ® scripts required to extract capacity, energy, state-of-charge, state-of-energy, open-circuit voltage, internal resistance, power, incremental capacity, and differential voltage. The MATLAB ® scripts developed to generate the plots in this paper have been made accessible to the public (Ha et al. in Mendeley Data, V3, 2023 ). The primary objective of this paper is to provide an accessible guide for undergraduate and graduate students, educators, and researchers interested in characterizing the performance and health metrics of batteries. Such characterizations are critical to the development of battery aging models that can be used to improve cycle life estimation and advance battery management system algorithms.

Laser cutting of electrodes for lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) has been studied to achieve high cut‐edge quality. However, the effects of contaminants generated during laser processing and the influence of cut‐edge quality on battery performance have not been sufficiently clarified. Consequently, mechanical cutting is still predominantly used in industrial electrode fabrication. In this study, the effects of active material thickness and compression on laser cutting of electrodes are analyzed in terms of cut‐edge quality, the amount of active material removal (AMR), and battery performance. Regardless of compression, relatively thin electrodes exhibit wider kerf widths and top widths compared to thick electrodes. Furthermore, six distinct physical phenomena were observed on the cut surfaces of the electrodes after laser processing. In terms of material removal, more active material is removed from thick or uncompressed electrodes than from thin or compressed ones during laser cutting. Finally, a half‐cell performance test was conducted to compare the areal capacity of electrodes with different configurations after laser cutting. The compressed electrodes exhibited higher areal capacity than the uncompressed ones, attributed to the reduced removal of active material during the cutting process.

Ground-based airglow UV-Vis spectral radiometric measurements are of great significance for the study of the characteristics of the middle and upper atmosphere. The airglow radiance produced by collisions between atoms/molecules and electrons is very weak, and it is also affected by atmospheric absorption. This requires that ground-based airglow observation spectrometers must possess high sensitivity, measurement accuracy, and stability. After comprehensively considering technical parameters, cost, and development cycle, an integrated design scheme is proposed, which takes a commercial high-sensitivity grating spectrometer as the core and carries out optical system modifications, including the matching design of a pretelescope, out-of-band suppression module, and high-precision detector temperature control system. The development of a UV-Vis spectrometer system for ground-based airglow radiation measurement has been completed. Laboratory performance tests were conducted on the system, and the results showed that: the detection wavelength range was 300.51 nm-650.83 nm, the spectral resolution was ≤2 nm, and the spectral radiance sensitivity was less than 1.1E-10 W/cm 2 /um/sr. Supplementary typical target signal-to-noise ratio: meets the design specification requirements.

Cultural intelligence is one’s ability to adapt when confronted with problems arising in interactions with people or artifacts of cultures other than one’s own. In this study, we explored two maximum-performance tests of cultural intelligence. One, used in previous research, measured cultural intelligence in the context of an individual conducting a business trip in another culture. The second, new to this research, measured cultural intelligence in the context of meeting someone from another culture while one is in the context of one’s own culture. So, the difference between the two tests was whether one was in one’s own culture or another and whether the individual who most had to adapt was oneself or someone else. We found that cultural intelligence in the two contexts was essentially the same construct. Cultural intelligence as measured by a typical-performance test is a different construct from cultural intelligence as measured by a maximum-performance test. In this research, general intelligence showed some limited correlation with cultural intelligence as measured by a maximum-performance, but not a typical-performance test. Cultural intelligence as an ability and as a disposition are not the same but rather complement each other.