Engineering data compendium. Human perception and performance. User's guide

The concept underlying the Engineering Data Compendium was the product of a research and development program (Integrated Perceptual Information for Designers project) aimed at facilitating the application of basic research findings in human performance to the design and military crew systems. The principal objective was to develop a workable strategy for: (1) identifying and distilling information of potential value to system design from the existing research literature, and (2) presenting this technical information in a way that would aid its accessibility, interpretability, and applicability by systems designers. The present four volumes of the Engineering Data Compendium represent the first implementation of this strategy. This is the first volume, the User's Guide, containing a description of the program and instructions for its use

The Use of Multiple Sensory Modalities by the Antillean Manatee (Trichechus Manatus Manatus) To Locate Food in Their Natural Environments

Manatees are herbivorous aquatic mammals found in the coastal and inland waters of the Atlantic Ocean. All three manatee species are currently listed as vulnerable on the IUCN red list and there still remains much unknown about their ecology. It is currently unknown what sensory modalities manatees use to locate their food in the wild. A literature review of the Paenungulata clade (sirenians, proboscideans, and hyracoideans) was conducted in order to compare and contrast what is known about the sensory modalities of the clade, to better understand the sensory modalities of manatees, particularly the ones they use to locate their food. Manatees have a higher frequency range for hearing than elephants, who have the best low-frequency hearing range known to mammals; hearing range of hyrax is unknown. All members of Paenungulata have vibrissae assisting in tactile abilities and potentially compensate for other senses such as hearing or vision. The ability to smell in manatees and hyrax is unknown, but elephants have been found to have an excellent sense of smell. Manatees, elephants, and hyrax have dichromatic vision. A preliminary experiment was designed to test manatee feeding modalities in the wild. The objectives of this study were to determine if the proposed methodology, modified for an aquatic environment from Renda & Roux (2017), was capable of testing manatee sensory use by limiting the sensory cues provided. Sensory modalities used in locating food were tested in two ways: when they know where the food is located, within a short distance, and when the food is placed randomly throughout their habitat, at long distances. In this study, we were able to show that the experimental design works, and provide preliminary data. In the short distance dichotomous choice trials, the percent of correct choices were 67% for the chemoreception + vision, 60% for chemoreception only, and 60% for vision only, with 50% being the rate of chance. For long distance experiments, the mean minimum time in hours it took manatees to consume the food placed randomly along their habitat of San San-Pond Sak River, Panama was 12.0 hours for chemoreception + vision, more than 22 hours for chemoreception only, and 6.89 hours for the control (no box). Due to the small sample size, no definitive conclusion could be made as to which sensory modality manatees use to find food, but our results support the idea that manatees use multiple modalities, chemoreception + vision, to locate food. Additional trials are needed in order to perform statistical analysis on the data

Teaching Complex Content in Healthcare: A Comparison of the Effect of Three Types of Multimedia Pretraining on Schematic Knowledge and Near Transfer

Challenged to teach complex content to students, university educators in healthcare disciplines face a practical need for effective pedagogical approaches. The preponderance of multimedia and digital resources in and beyond college classrooms suggests that solutions to teaching complex content should leverage educational technology and multimedia resources. The multimedia principle of pretraining is one effective way to augment complex content learning. The pretraining principle specifies that learning is more effective when the names and characteristics of main terms and concepts are introduced before more nuanced and complex content is presented. The purpose of this study was to investigate three approaches to pretraining—traditional pretraining, pretraining with a static concept map, and pretraining with an animated concept map—to examine the effect that the method of pretraining had on schematic knowledge and near transfer achievement. Pretraining has been found especially effective with learners who have low prior knowledge, with difficult and conceptual content, and with fast-paced instruction. The study also explored whether student perceptions about the usefulness of concept maps as a learning resource was reflected in achievement. Using a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design, 145 occupational therapy students were assigned to one of the three treatment conditions. Following a pretest to obtain a baseline of prior knowledge, the 12-minute pretraining treatment on the topic of sensory integration theory was administered via a video module, and then participants were exposed to a 60-minute multimedia lecture. An immediate posttest was completed, followed two weeks later by a delayed posttest. A questionnaire to measure participant perceptions about concept maps was also administered at the posttest. Data analysis was completed using repeated measures ANOVA to examine gain scores from pretest to posttest to delayed posttest. On the measures of schematic knowledge and near transfer, the static concept map group demonstrated statistically significant gains and stronger scores than the other two groups. The findings suggest that the most effective of these three strategies for learning complex content is pretraining with a static concept map. Traditional pretraining is another viable option but pretraining with an animated concept map is not an efficient approach

The Human Centric Lighting Approach for the Design of Age-Friendly Products

As world’s societal wellbeing is growing, in the near future the ‘seniors condition’ will force designers and companies to rethink the way they conceive, produce and sell products. This condition is fundamental for some strategic markets like the lighting domain. In this scenario, Human Centric Lighting (HCL) approach considers both seniors’ biological aspects and technological advances to develop eco-efficient solutions that consider visual and non-visual aspects of light. This paper show the use of HCL as a new design approach able to help designers in the development of a wide range of lighting solutions; from the analysis of human conditions, this paper describes the research process used to design a HCL-Based System that perfectly meets seniors’ needs